Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

I really should read my own blog.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

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

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

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

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

Let me file that under fuck it.

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

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

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I Knew There Was Something Going On, But I Did Not See This Coming

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I knew there was something going on, but I did not see this coming.

Axios (sorry!) article on the secret campaign by Steve Bannon and other Trump allies to get Ken Paxton acquitted.

Following a secret campaign coordinated by top Trump allies, Texas state senators yesterday acquitted Attorney General Ken Paxton of all impeachment charges, allowing him to return to his post.

Why it matters: The allegations against Paxton, a close ally of former President Trump, bitterly divided the Texas GOP, Jay R. Jordan of Axios Houston and Nicole Cobler of Axios Austin report.

Behind the scenes: National Republicans organized an under-the-radar campaign of outside conservative pressure on the Texas senators designed to neutralize mainstream media coverage, top strategists tell me.

This outside unofficial team operated independently of the Paxton legal operation — like “a super PAC without the money,” a top GOP strategist said.

The team had a “very well-defined target audience … no different than a confirmation battle,” the strategist said.

After winning, Paxton tweeted his thanks to the conservative news outlet National Pulse, a valued player in the under-the-radar drive.

Catch me up: Senators weighed whether Paxton illegally used his office to benefit an Austin real estate developer, and improperly fired some of his top deputies who reported him to the FBI and other agencies.

Despite an overwhelming majority of House Republicans voting to impeach Paxton in May, only two of 18 Republican senators voted to convict Paxton.

So … how did that happen?  (see the full story at the link up top)

I hope the feds nail Paxton to the (proverbial) wall.

Last minute addition, just after posting:

Open thread.

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Late Night Open Thread: No Sympathy for Rep. Boebert

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Late Night Open Thread: No Sympathy for Rep. Boebert 1

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Sunday Night Funnies Open Thread (Extremely On-Line Social Media Edition)

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Yes, you *have* heard the name Bari Weiss before, at least if you’ve skimmed the posts sharing my unhealthy compulsion to mock Bari and all her cronies. On the other hand, their ‘ideas’ are so weightless and insubstantial that perhaps they slide off your minds, unregretted.

It’s the end of the weekend, after one chaotic week and facing into another, and mocking the deserving is as much energy as we can spare… (Bonus: Elon Musk’s most mock-worthy ex!) From Kerry Howley at NYMag, “Scenes From the End of the Sexual Revolution”:

The question “Has the Sexual Revolution Failed” contains within itself a number of other questions (failed at what? Failed whom? Why are we talking about this?), precisely none of which were answered Wednesday night at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where 1,600 plaid-skirted e-girls and be- khakied normies and the aspiring canceled paid as much as $165 a seat to hear a British ideologue, a deft Dimes Square shape-shifter, an ex-Muslim podcaster, and Techno Mechanicus’s mother debate the resolution. You can’t really fault the organizer, even if the organizer was Bari Weiss. It ought to have worked. An ill-defined proposition, half of Red Scare, a random British lady very upset about BDSM, and Grimes? No notes…

The alt-right’s inchoate longing for sexual repression in the absence of religion remains mysterious. Fifty-six percent of the audience, polled beforehand by text at an event featuring four ambitious women and moderated by a queer married media mogul, agreed that the sexual revolution had “failed.” The debate was drawn from Louise Perry’s book, serviceably titled The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, which takes as its presumed reader an extremely credulous liberal raised up in isolation from any information beyond the feminist blogosphere circa 2004 and who needs to be informed, at truly extraordinary length, that men are, on average, physically stronger than women. Women have been pressured to “fuck like men,” a situation that leaves alpha males very happy but all women depressed, abused, vulnerable, and commodified. If there is nothing here that went unsaid by Kay Hymowitz or Christina Hoff Sommers in the dark heyday of the hookup-culture think piece, at least everything sounds better in a British accent.

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Medium Cool – Fictional Worlds You Would Actually Like to Live In

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Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

I thought we might do something a little different tonight, and pick up where we left off last week when we talked about books that make you feel like you’re there.

Medium Cool – Books That Make You Feel Like You’re There

Toward the end of last week’s thread, kalakal mentioned the fictional world he would most like to live in, at least for awhile, and I thought it might be fun to talk about that tonight.  Maybe it’s one of the worlds you wrote about if you participated in last week’s post – or maybe a world that someone else wrote about that intrigued you.

I know it’s hard to pick just one, so you can have up to 5 worlds you would most like to live in.  But please, if you do have more than one world you would like to live in, write about them in separate comments, please!  (Not trying to pump up the number of comments; I think lists of things are less likely to be read and commented on.)

But let’s make it a bit more challenging!

If the world in Witness is the one you would like to live in – at least for awhile – what role would you like to play?  Would you be the one trying to keep someone safe?  One of the young bucks competing for love?  The children?  A wise elder?  Or would you like to live in that world without that particular storyline?  And if so, what would be the storyline for your world?

As always on Medium Cool, I set the rules but I know there will be lose loose interpretations or the rules will go right out the window.  But it’s a starting point!

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War for Ukraine Day 571: The Butcher’s Bill from Last Night’s Attack on Odesa

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Last night thanks to an email heads up from commenter Dopey-o, I put up a supplemental update that Russia had put about a dozen TU 95 strategic bombers in the air, that they were headed to or over the Black Sea, and that meant that an aerial attack was most likely imminent on Ukrainian civilian and civilian infrastructure targets. This was indeed the case.

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1703346429236797748

EuroMaidan News has the details:

In the early hours of 17 September, Russia attacked Ukraine with six Iranian-made Shahed one-way attack drones and ten cruise missiles, targeting Odesa Oblast, as Ukraine destroyed all the drones and six missiles, according to the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The Air Force says Russians launched six Shahed-136/131 UAVs attacked from the southeast and south (Russia’s Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Crimea’s Chauda), while 10 X-101/X-555/X-55 air-launched missiles were fired from 9 Tu-95MS strategic aircraft from the Engels air base area in Russia’s Saratov Oblast.

“The main direction of the strike was the south of Odesa oblast. Air defenses were active along the route of the missiles and UAVs. Fighter aircraft, anti-aircraft missile units, mobile fire groups, and other means of destruction were involved in repelling the air attack,” the Air Force reported.

According to the Air Force, Ukrainian forces shot down 12 air targets, including all six Shaheds and six of 10 cruise missiles. The Ukraine South Defense Forces specified that four Shahed drones were downed in Mykolaiv Oblast, and two more in the Odesa skies.

“Enemy missiles hit the territory of a civilian agricultural enterprise in Odesa Oblast, the State Emergency Service is working [on the scene], and the local military administration will inform you of the consequences,” the Air Force said.

The Ukraine South Defense Forces added that the attack damaged agricultural land and a grain storage facility in Berezivskyi district of Odesa Oblast, and no one was injured.

As of the publication of this article, the Odesa Regional Military did not share any further details.

I have not seen anything published about the numbers of wounded or killed in last night’s attack.

There are also two cargo ships in port at Chornomorsk about 20 km from the city of Odesa. They are flagged in Palau, got to Ukraine by running the Russian blockade by hugging the western coast of the Black Sea adjacent to several EU and NATO member states, and they there to take on a full load of Ukrainian grain to be delivered to Egypt and Israel. They’ll use this western route to get back to and then through the Straits of Bosphorus. I think it is likelty that Russia was either aiming for them, as well as the granaries and storehouses in Odesa, and the Ukrainians brought those missiles and drones down or that last night’s attack was partially intended to deter them from leaving port for the return leg.

As of right now, Olga Honcharenko has no new posts, which means Russia has nothing in the air. Hopefully it stays that way so I only have to do one war update tonight.

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

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Open Thread: Another Maui Update

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Good (if gruesome) explainer from the Washington Post — “Death toll from Maui wildfires drops to 97, with 31 missing”:

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Great Article, and OzarkHillbilly’s New Hero

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OzarkHillbilly sent me this link and described Alicia Roth Weigel as his new hero.

I Came Out as Intersex in Front of the Texas Legislature

In her new memoir, Alicia Roth Weigel shares her story of coming out in the most political way possible.
It’s a long(ish) read, but her writing style is very engaging. (Politico Magazine)

Great Article, and OzarkHillbilly's New Hero
Alicia Roth Weigel is seen in the Texas Capitol in Austin. | Courtesy of Alicia Roth Weigel

At 3 a.m. on the day I made the biggest decision of my life, I called Wendy Davis for advice.

She’d been asleep, of course. It was a desperate moment, though, and I needed my mentor. Despite the hour, Wendy took my call and listened as I laid out the plan I’d frantically hatched over the past few hours. She was no stranger to pulling stunts to make “good trouble” — having once filibustered for 13 hours straight to help kill a bill that would have restricted abortion access across Texas, which made her the stuff of feminist legend — and she gave me her stamp of approval. But at the end of our call, she gave me one suggestion too: “I think you should try to look as feminine as possible when you walk into that committee room,” she said. “I know you don’t wear makeup, but maybe throw on a bit of lipstick, a killer dress and some power heels.”

Wendy often advises that heels bring confidence, adding a little height and some power to your posture.
“That way when you take the dais, all those old legislators’ minds will be wandering — we know some of them have even tried to hit on you before — and it will really throw them for a loop when you drop the fact that you were, you know, born with balls.”

I was about to come out as an intersex woman. And I was going to do it in front of the Texas legislature.

You may be wondering what intersex means. I’m not surprised. Though statistically we’re as common as redheads (about 2 percent of the world’s population), our identity is erased not just from history books but even in the present day. We are present in society but hidden in plain sight. Yes, the “I” in LGBTQIA+ is for “intersex,” but as of now, it might as well stand for “invisible.” We’re not exotic, but we are exhausted — constantly struggling for recognition or mere acknowledgment of our existence.

To start at the beginning, we have to rewind just over three decades, a bit before I was born.

Take a few minutes to read the whole thing.

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