Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Petty moves from a petty man.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

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

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

This fight is for everything.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

I really should read my own blog.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

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

Peak wingnut was a lie.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

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Monday Morning Open Thread: Thank All the Gods for President Biden

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Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: St. Ashli of the Tragic Narrative Arc

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Late Night Open Thread: St. Ashli of the Tragic Narrative Arc 1
 
Late Night Open Thread: St. Ashli of the Tragic Narrative Arc

Not exactly grifting, as far as I can tell, but… exploitive, with a veneer of godliness. Per local news CBS8:

… The film is created by SMS Novel, a faith-based interactive film company that has produced bio-pics like “I Am Kim Porter” and “King of Detroit.”

“It paints a clear picture of #1 the American journey; all of us can find us in Ashli Babbit in some ways, but secondly, a cautionary tale that misinformation has deadly consequences,” said the film’s director Jomo Johnson.

“I think that is subjective that is up to the viewer. We are not promoting one view or the other. Again, I think the fact that she is no longer with us shows that there is a consequence of whatever side you choose,” Johnson said.

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War for Ukraine Day 641: The New York Times Actually Corrects a Head Line & Above the Byline Lede

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Quick housekeeping note: I think one you asked me a question/follow up question in the comments overnight after I’d racked out. If you can remember what it was, just repost it and I’ll try to get to it tomorrow.

I did not think this was actually possible:

Hoocoodanode?

Russian occupied Crimea:

No word yet as to whether Jim Cantore is being HALO airdropped into Crimea. Also, do they have Waffle Houses in Crimea?

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

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‘Interesting’ Read: ‘Zoom fatigue’ may take toll on the brain and the heart, researchers say

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Small study, biased observers, all the usual caveats. Still… From the Washington Post, “‘Zoom fatigue’ may take toll on the brain and the heart, researchers say” [unpaywalled gift link]:

Does a session on Zoom, FaceTime or Microsoft Teams leave you drained and listless?…

A recent brain-monitoring study supports the phenomenon, finding a connection between videoconferencing in educational settings and physical symptoms linked to fatigue.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, looked for physiological signs of fatigue in 35 students attending lectures on engineering at an Austrian university. Half of the class attended the 50-minute lecture via videoconference in a nearby lab and a face-to-face lecture the following week, while the other half attended first in person, then online.

Participants were monitored with electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) instruments that recorded electrical activity in the brain and their heart rhythms. They also participated in surveys about their mood and fatigue levels…

There were “notable” differences between the in-person and online groups, the researchers write. Video participants’ fatigue mounted over the course of the session, and their brain states showed they were struggling to pay attention. The groups’ moods varied, too, with in-person participants reporting they felt livelier, happier and more active, and online participants saying they felt tired, drowsy and “fed up.”

Overall, the researchers write, the study offers evidence of the physical toll of videoconferencing and suggests that it “should be considered as a complement to face-to-face interaction, but not as a substitute.”

They say the research should be replicated in business settings and homes to get a more accurate sense of how such sessions affect participants, calling for further studies that include more portions of the brain and a broader participant base…

If nothing else, it’s probably useful to know there’s actual physical effects, if only to be prepared in advance.

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Open Thread: The Rise of Anger

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To pick up on a recent exchange in a hearing that can loosely be summarized as…

“Suck my dick!”

“No, you suck my dick first!

… a recent Washington Post article talks about The Ominous Rise of Congressional Anger the likes of which hasn’t been seen at this level since the civil war.  They start by mentioning the exchange that is referenced above, and they also refer to the elbow to the kidneys that supposedly came from the former Squeaker.  He seems nice. (original link replaced with a gift link.

I’m not familiar with Philip Bump at the Washington Post, and he jumps around all over the place in his article, but still, I found some of it pretty interesting.  (Not sure if it’s behind a paywall – I was able to read the whole thing – but if it is, anyone has a gift article to share, I can add it here in the post.)  Gift link, course of Subaru Dianne.

Are we headed back to this, where congress critters engaged in hand-to-hand combat on the floor of the House?  That gives new meaning to “Let them fight!”  Hopefully the Dems will just bring protective gear!

In the Civil War era, outright violence was common on Capitol Hill. In her 2018 book “The Field of Blood,” Yale University professor Joanne Freeman tracked the number of violent incidents in Congress in the years before and after that conflict.

“In those times, … armed groups of Northern and Southern congressmen engaged in hand-to-hand combat on the House floor. Angry about rights violated and needs denied, and worried about the degradation of their section of the Union, they defended their interests with threats, fists and weapons,” she wrote. “When that fighting became endemic and congressmen strapped on knives and guns before heading to the Capitol every morning — when they didn’t trust the institution of Congress or even their colleagues to protect their persons — it meant something.”

Speaking of jumping around, the article purports to be about the rise of congressional anger specifically, but this chart has nothing to do with congressional anger.  Still, I found it interesting.

Am I crazy, or does this remind anyone else of Trump’s signature?  Apparently he is the embodiment of nasty politics.

Another excerpt:

This link between the decline of confidence in institutions and the rise of violence has been measured elsewhere. Writing for the London School of Economics last year, visiting fellows Moritz Schmoll and Wang Leung Ting delineated research showing that connection. They discovered that violent incidents in a country’s legislature were less likely to occur either when a country had a robust democracy — since institutions allowed for peaceful resolution of disputes — or when there was no democracy at all, since autocrats could simply impose their will.

They also found evidence that moments of transition between the two might be ones in which violence rose.

“During a fragile and limited democratisation process in the 1990s, brawls started happening quite regularly in the Duma (Russian Assembly), something unheard of during the Soviet era. After President Putin’s election and the progressive return to a closed authoritarian system, violence subsided,” they wrote. “Turkey, which in the 2000s had relatively high levels of democracy, had only occasional brawls in those years. But after President Erdogan shifted the country onto an increasingly authoritarian path, effectively turning it into an ‘anocracy’ that blends authoritarian and democratic elements, violence in parliaments increased significantly.”

The United States is hovering near a transitional point.

There’s another article on anger that I keep seeing in my open browser tabs – An Appropriate Anger.  I haven’t had time to read it yet, but it’s a reminder multiple times a day that I want to read it.  And it comes with this great graphic!

Open Thread: The Rise of Anger

Not sure if this is Sunday afternoon material, but we’ve been 8 hours without a new thread, so discuss this topic or anything else.

Anyhoo, this is a totally open thread.

Update: Mike in Pasadena notes that the title should have read The Ominous Rise of REPUBLICAN Congressional Anger.  It’s hard to argue with that!

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Sunday Morning Open Thread: Everybody Gird Their Loins

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Here’s a pleasant hour’s listening, from Austin City Limits — Ms. Raitt was given a Lifetime Achievement Award. (When I clicked on the embedded link, it took me straight to my local PBS station & started streaming.)
 


 


Excellent, if rather depressing, summary of the current state of affairs — “The debate over Ukraine aid was already complicated. Then it became tangled up in US border security”. (For ‘border security’, of course, read ‘Repub electoral politics’):

… President Joe Biden’s nearly $106 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other needs sits idle in Congress, neither approved nor rejected, but subjected to new political demands from Republicans who are insisting on U.S.-Mexico border policy changes to halt the flow of migrants…

When Congress returns this coming week from the holiday break, Biden’s request will be a top item on the to-do list, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Failure risks delaying U.S. military aid to Kyiv and Israel, along with humanitarian assistance for Gaza, in the midst of two wars, potentially undermining America’s global standing…

What just a year ago was overwhelming support for Ukraine’s young democracy as it reaches for an alliance with the West to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion has devolved into another partisan fight in the United States.

Members of Congress overwhelmingly support Ukraine, embracing Zelenskyy as they did when he arrived on a surprise visit last December to a hero’s welcome. But the continued delivery of U.S. military and government aid is losing favor with a hard-right wing of Republican lawmakers and with some Americans…

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Late Night Open Thread: Why Do We All Laugh At Elon’s Mighty Weapon?…

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Including, apparently, the lawsuits! Musk’s lawyers *did* actually file suit againt Media Matter for America (MMFA), in a fashion many online legal watchers classified as ‘would take many billable hours to rise to the level of ‘half-hearted’:

On Monday, Elon Musk followed through on his threat to sue the nonprofit watchdog Media Matters, filing suit over the site’s recent claim that X has been placing ads from major corporations alongside pro-Nazi content. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, names the site as well as Eric Hananoki, the reporter who authored the piece in question…

… But does Musk’s lawsuit actually have a chance? Some experts seem far from convinced. Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, told CNN that Musk’s choice of a more favorable venue like Texas suggests an attempt to bolster a weak case. (X Corp. is based in Nevada, while Media Matters is located in Washington, D.C.)

“It’s one of those lawsuits that’s filed more for symbolism than for substance — as reflected in just how empty the allegations really are and in where Musk chose to file, singling out the ultraconservative Northern District of Texas despite its absence of any logical connection to the dispute,” Vladeck said. “The choice of venue can best be described as trying to shore up a weak claim on the merits with a bench more likely to be sympathetic even to weak claims.” Andrew Fleischman, a trial and appellate lawyer based in Georgia, also pointed to the venue location for the case. “X, a Nevada corporation, is suing Media Matters, a Maryland corporation, in Texas, a state whose only relation to the parties is that it has vowed to jail anyone who criticizes one of them,” he posted on X…

Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor and a Politico columnist, described the lawsuit on social media as “a PR stunt masquerading as a lawsuit.”…

Late Night Open Thread: <em>Why Do We All Laugh At Elon's Mighty Weapon?... </em> 1

The lawyers in Grimes’ custody case, on the other hand, probably high-fived each other when Musk whipped out his followup… jape? (He’ll claim it was a joke):

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