Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

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

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

This blog will pay for itself.

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

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

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

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

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

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

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

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

“Alexa, change the president.”

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

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Monday Evening Open Thread: Welcome to America

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Meanwhile… because this reality is very badly scripted… another #activeshooter incident, this time at UNC Chapel Hill. Per the Associated Press:

An apparent shooting at the University of North Carolina’s flagship campus Monday led students and faculty to barricade themselves in dorm rooms, offices and classrooms for hours until the lockdown was lifted…

The school’s first alert was sent out just after 1 p.m. At 1:50 p.m., officials posted on X that the shelter-in-place order remained in effect and that it was “an ongoing situation.” About 40 minutes later, the school added a post saying: “Remain sheltered in place. This is an ongoing situation. Suspect at large.”

About two hours after the first alert went out, officers were still arriving in droves, with about 50 police vehicles at the scene and multiple helicopters circling over the school…

Shortly before 4 p.m., students and faculty started emerging from campus buildings, with the lockdown over.

The report of the shooting and subsequent lockdown paralyzed campus and parts of the surrounding town of Chapel Hill a week after classes began at the state’s flagship public university. The university has approximately 20,000 undergraduate students and 12,000 graduate students…

Oliver Katz, an exchange student from Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, was working out at the campus gym with friends when he got the alert on his phone. Some students crowded into the locker rooms to get away from windows while others crouched in the corners and sat on the floor, he said. They stayed there for about three hours before they were evacuated by police.

“This never happens where I’m from,” Katz said, adding that before he decided to study at UNC, it crossed his mind that school shootings were much more common in the United States. “It was intense. But I was a little surprised that other people weren’t panicking that much.”…

Thankfully — is that the right word? — suspect in custody, and no reports of random victims yet.

Practically a false alarm, if you squint a little!

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Cults & Campaigns (Open Thread)

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Jon Chait at New York Mag thought DeSantis would beat Trump in the 2020 primary but admits now that possibility looks remote. He says he underestimated “the elemental bond…between the Republican base and the candidate it seems determined to nominate as president for the third straight election.”

To illustrate that bond, Chait quoted a letter from a listener that wingnut pundit/podcaster Mollie Hemingway shared about why candidates who criticize Trump are failing in the GOP primary:

Keep in mind that supporting Trump came with costs never associated with supporting Bush, McCain, or Romney. Trump supporters lost friendships. Brothers and sisters stopped talking to each other. There are parents whose children disowned them, and grandparents who will never see their grandchildren again because they stood by Donald Trump.

Every Republican has these stories. Every Republican knows Republicans who have these stories.

Attacking Trump was effectively telling every Republican who made real sacrifices that they were stupid for doing so because Trump was just a poser.

Those supporters were stupid to value Trump more than friends and families, and Trump is just a poser. But as we’ve observed around here, it’s humiliating to admit you’ve been conned. That’s what they can’t bring themselves to do — maybe even precisely because the con cost them relationships they valued.

Chait again:

It would be flattering to my prognostication to blame the failures on small things like DeSantis’s messaging choices. But I think the truth is that I made the larger error of analyzing the primary as though it were a normal party nomination, when in reality DeSantis is attempting the far more difficult task of displacing the leader of a personality cult.

In 2016, Trump dumbfounded prognosticators, who assumed the conservative base was motivated by conservatism, by adopting a series of heterodox positions without suffering the customary penalty. The apparent lesson was that Republican voters cared more about confrontational affect than policy substance. DeSantis, absorbing this conclusion, served up relentless hostility against the left, which he promised to humiliate and destroy, using authoritarian methods if necessary.

But it wasn’t mere pugilism that Republican voters turned out to crave. Trump had redefined the party’s identity around loyalty to himself. That loyalty could mean posing as a champion of gay rights and posing with a Pride flag, as Trump did just three years ago, praising China’s response to COVID, flattering Democratic leaders, or any other act that would normally be evidence of betrayal. Trump has regularly described his own appointees, whom he once lavished with praise, as pathetic losers. His fans have grown accustomed to altering their beliefs about everything and anything to conform to their leader’s ever-changing line.

DeSantis built a following in Florida based on lib-owning, which I dreaded he could replicate nationwide. But Chait makes a sound point about Trump’s frequent reversals. He senses where crowds are and reflects their hate and fear back at them — Trump’s comments on trans issues are an example of this. He admitted at one rally that it wasn’t an issue that riled people up in 2016 but does now.

DeSantis tried to turn that johnny-come-hately-lately stance against Trump via the Nazi/incel-themed video, suggesting DeSantis was hating on LGBTQ people back when Trump was welcoming Caitlyn Jenner to the ladies room at Trump Tower and posing with a Gays for Trump pride flag. But it didn’t land, and not just because the Nazi/incel memes put people off. Maybe the turnoff was related to what Hemingway’s correspondent said — it made Trump supporters feel like chumps (which, of course, they are).

Chait on what he got wrong:

The Trump cult is hardly a new development, of course. How did I miss it? My error was to assume the cult could be manufactured by political elites. George W. Bush enjoyed a robust cult following in his heyday. Conservative media figures routinely described him in terms that bordered on the religious, or pornographic, or both — he was the swaggering, clear-eyed Good Man sent by God to lead America through a decisive struggle.

The most striking aspect of the Bush cult phenomenon was how quickly it disappeared. In 2006, after the Iraq War and his failed attempt to privatize Social Security had tanked his popularity, Republican elites quickly and ruthlessly cut Bush loose. Conservative media suddenly sent out the message that Bush was not the true son of Reagan after all, but a heretic who had betrayed conservatism. Some combination of right-wing elites — Rupert Murdoch, the Republican groups convened by Grover Norquist — seemed to have its finger on the button that could turn the cult on or off.

What I took away from the experience was the belief that Republican loyalty to a single leader could be transferred quickly and easily from one object of worship to another. But what may have been true before 2016 seems to no longer hold. Murdoch spent a year overtly trying to build a DeSantis cult through his media empire, only to find the button had stopped working.

I think Chait’s making an error even now by conflating whatever Repubs felt for Bush II with a cult. I remember the gross slobbering over Commander Codpiece too, but it wasn’t in the same universe as what we’ve seen with Trump, at least not on as massive a scale. I don’t know what’s behind it, but the personal investment — the “elemental bond” — is different for reasons I will never fathom.

Open thread.

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Credit Where Credit Is Due

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For some reason, this sentence makes me ridiculously happy!

“Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.”

~ Aaron Rupar

Also, why do all of Trump’s female attorneys look like Barbie?
(Apologies to Barbie, it’s not her fault)

Oh, and everyone probably knows already, but we have a date!
April 2026

March 4, 2024

PSA:  Look for a guest post from Valdivia on Tuesday early evening about the women’s soccer players in Spain.  They are standing up for all of us.

Open thread.

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GO AWAY, Idalia and DeSantis

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FL Gov. Ron DeSantis’s sad trombone of a campaign was womp-womp-womping its way through Iowa last week and had planned to be in South Carolina today. But a racist terrorist attack in Jacksonville that killed three and a storm aiming at the state forced him off the trail and back to Tallahassee, according to WUSF:

Crises at home pose a new test for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose presidential campaign travels are now up in the air as his state mourns a racially motivated shooting in Jacksonville and prepares for a tropical storm.

A day after appearing in Iowa, DeSantis was back in the state capital of Tallahassee on Sunday for a news conference on Tropical Storm Idalia. He urged Floridians to heed the advice of emergency managers. He also offered condolences and condemned the killing of three Black people by a white man who authorities say left behind a suicide note, a will, and writings with racist material.

We can’t know for sure, but it was probably the storm that prompted the governor’s return, not the racist terrorist attack. He sucks at consoling people and is notoriously extra-squirmy after violence or public outrages committed by white supremacists and antisemites, i.e., The Base. He tends to get angrier at suggestions that he should address these incidents than about the incidents themselves.

DeSantis and his awful wife did attend a Jacksonville vigil for those killed by the racist gunman. This surprised me, and I’m still weighing whether he should get credit for it or if it was a campaign stunt. But while he was speaking, he got booed by attendees until a local councilwoman stepped in to save his ass: (Orlando Sentinel)

Following services earlier in the day, about 200 people showed up at a Sunday evening vigil a block from the Dollar General store in Jacksonville where officials said Ryan Palmeter opened fire Saturday using guns he bought legally despite a past involuntary commitment for a mental health exam.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis — who is running for the GOP nomination for president, who has loosened gun laws in Florida and who has antagonized civil rights leaders by deriding “wokeness ” — was loudly booed as he addressed the vigil.

Ju’Coby Pittman, a Jacksonville city councilwoman who represents the neighborhood where the shooting happened, stepped in to ask the crowd to listen.

“It ain’t about parties today,” she said. “A bullet don’t know a party.”

Councilwoman Pittman’s saying that was understandable. Things were getting mighty uncomfortable, and beads of sweat were rapidly forming on Tacky O’s upper lip. But we all know there’s only one party that prioritizes guns and ammo over people. There’s only one party that is whitewashing black history, including the state’s appalling record of racist violence. So, no credit. The crowd booed the right person.

Soon-to-be Hurricane Idalia must strike the flailing campaign masterminds as a potential godsend for their broke-ass effort. The earned media is already rolling in. When I left home at 7 AM to complete my storm preparations (beer! cheese! more wine!), I turned the TV on to keep the dogs company, and when I returned, DeSantis was droning monotonously on CNN about likely downed trees and power outages.

He’ll probably get a chance to bust out the shrimper boots by Thursday.

Publix, a regional grocery chain down here, used to make hurricane cakes that were decorated with icing depicting the radar image of a storm and the slogan GO AWAY written on the side or top:

Go Away, Governor DeSantis

But some people found that in bad taste and complained, so Publix stopped making them. Then people complained about that. Tampa Bay Times columnist Stephanie Hayes defended the hurricakes today:

Lastly, and this may seem like a leap, but stay with me. I often wonder if seemingly innocuous moves like this contribute to individual apathy and extremism. A lot to put on a cake, right? But it’s already nearly impossible to shop anywhere without referencing a historical flow chart of bad corporate behavior. Is my toothpaste purchase adjacent to an insurrection? Does this tasty sub sandwich harm the LGBTQ+ community? Did I just ding the planet by expelling the fuel it takes to get to another store that might be less financially nefarious? Did ordering my toilet paper online contribute to a billionaire’s evil plot to establish a colony of space cadets on Mars? Have I eaten anything today? Where are my keys?

I am just saying, it’s not outside the realm of possibility to think that a small story concerning a dessert themed around regional weather interests might be the weight that tips an already exhausted and confused person off the scale. Why try to do the right thing when everything is wrong? Disillusioned, this person will start using the word “woke” unironically and head to the dark web, where they inevitably become radicalized and forge a campaign as the next president of these United States of America. We will all watch this person gesticulating wildly on a political debate stage sponsored by Publix as we eat plain white frosted cakes and a tropical weather event bears down on our uninsured ramshackle homes.

The defense rests. Bring back the cakes.

She’s not wrong — trying to live life in an ethical way is complicated, and extremism is an easy way out for people who can’t hack it.

Anyhoo, maybe I’ll make my own damn cake decorated with a hurricane graphic and DeSantis’s face in the middle and a slogan iced on the side that applies to both: GO THE FUCK AWAY.

Open thread.

ETA: Breaking from WaPo:

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan has scheduled Donald Trump’s D.C. trial on charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election for March 4, 2024. A separate hearing was being held in Atlanta Monday morning to determine whether Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, can move his election-related indictment from state to federal court. Trump is a frontrunner in the Republican 2024 presidential contest, and the D.C. trial’s starting date is the day before the Super Tuesday primaries.

H/T to valued commenter Sanjeevs for the heads-up on the ruling.

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Late Night Open Thread: The RNC Will Go to Houston in 2028…

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… Assuming, by that point in time, that the Republican National Convention needs a venue larger than an Idaho community center. And that Houston hasn’t been abandoned due to the Republicans’ inability to keep the power grid working reliably. Or, even worse by RNC standards, flipped to the sane party — us Democrats!

Per the Texas Tribune:

… The RNC’s 168 members voted to choose Houston on Friday morning in Milwaukee, the site of next year’s convention and the first Republican primary debate earlier this week. The announcement came uncommonly early — five years before the convention and a year before the 2024 convention.

McDaniel brought up the party’s efforts to reach out to Hispanic voters in the selection of a city in Texas, where conservative Hispanic candidates have progressed in long-time Democratic strongholds in South Texas.

“We all know that Hispanic voters have been shifting toward the Republican Party. Texans like Monica De La Cruz and Tony Gonzales and Ted Cruz and Mayra Flores have been front and center leading that charge in 2022,” McDaniel said…

Oh, so now Rafael Ted’s Hispanic?

Politico explains:

… Outgoing Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, a Democrat who is term-limited and cannot seek reelection, said the city is “proud” to be chosen as the site of the RNC’s 2028 gathering. He described Houston as “the nation’s most diverse and inclusive city,” one that “represents the future of the United States and our aspirations as a country.”

“This keeps us on the global stage, allowing us to showcase our amazing venues and the people who keep our hotels, restaurants, and local businesses operating,” Turner said in a statement.

While Texas remains a red state, shifting demographics and narrowing GOP margins in recent years have given Democrats a degree of hope in the state…

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Sunday Evening Open Thread: The GOP Grifter Speedrun

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When it comes to Republican candidates, never say never in this fallen world, but I’m beginning to think Vivek chose to jump into the 2024 primaries because he expects to be in jail or in hiding by 2026.

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War for Ukraine Day 550: Russia Bombards Ukraine Again

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(Image by NEIVANMADE)

A brief housekeeping note: I am watching the advisories and forecasts regarding Idalia. There’s still a lot of uncertainty in the forecast, but I expect we’ll all have a pretty good idea by early tomorrow afternoon where the storm is going to go. Given the uncertainty in the forecast, I cannot say that I won’t have to miss an update or two. More to follow on this tomorrow.

Last night, the russians carried out another massive missile attack against Ukraine. Air defense systems shot down all four cruise missiles (X-101/X-55/X-555 types). The russians also launched decoy targets. Several private homes were damaged by debris from intercepted missiles. So far, reportedly, only two people were lightly injured.

📷 @police_kyiv_obl

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

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