Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Our messy unity will be our strength.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

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

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

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

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

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

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

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

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

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

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: Another Weird Week Behind Us

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Also:

… [W]hile the drama surrounding the former president intensified, his successor has spent the week doing something altogether different: President Joe Biden has been focused on governing. NBC News ran this report nearly 24 hours ago, which generated less attention than Trump’s superseding indictment.

President Joe Biden announced new plans to protect workers and communities from extreme heat Thursday as millions of people in the U.S. broil in record-high temperatures. … Biden said he has directed the Labor Department to increase enforcement of heat-safety violations and inspections in high-risk workplaces, such as construction and agriculture sites.

The same report added that Department of Labor will also “issue a hazard alert to tell employers what they should do to protect workers; help ensure employees are aware of their rights, such as protections against retaliation; and highlight steps the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has to try to ensure worker safety.”

These moves came the day before Biden prepared to sign an executive order that, as an Associated Press report explained, shift decisions on “the prosecution of serious military crimes, including sexual assault, to independent military attorneys, taking that power away from victims’ commanders.”

This comes on heels of Biden taking steps to begin sharing evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine with the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

This was also a week in which the Democratic president:

= took new steps to protect renters and boost housing supply;
= announced new efforts to address methane pollution;
= unveiled new measures designed to increase coverage of mental health care;
= established a new national monument honoring Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley;
= announced new steps to improve access to online services for Americans with disabilities;
= and provided student debt relief to thousands of students who’d been ripped off…

… I’m reminded of the 2020 presidential campaign, when voters were effectively told that a Biden presidency would be a welcome shift from the daily drama and scandals of the Trump White House. Biden would use his experience and temperament to oversee an executive branch focused on problem-solving.

It wouldn’t be glamorous. It wouldn’t generate excitement. But Americans would see a president and his team doing real and worthwhile work that would help make a difference, without the West Wing circus.

This week offered a timely reminder that those election-season vows were correct.

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Late Night Open Thread: Repubs Complain DeSantis Has Done the Unforgivable

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Ron and his kkkrew of ‘mischevious’ young groypers have rent the GOP’s flimsy scrim of plausible deniability (Of course I’m not a racist, but many people are saying… ) to flinders! Those careless bastards!!!

Rod Dreher is saddened…

Because, see, Rod has a Black Jewish friend:

I’ve talked to a couple of ppl who know him, including a Jew, & they both believe Nate. They think he was truly naive. I hope that is true. I spent some of this afternoon in Budapest in the Dohany Street Synagogue, in the garden of which Hungarian Nazis buried 2,200 Jews in 2/

a mass grave, during the Holocaust. It’s just up the street from the hotel where Eichmann set up HQ to direct the Budapest deportations. It disgusts me that these young right wingers play around with these symbols to be edgelords. I’m going to choose to believe my friends, & 3/

accept that Hochman sincerely didn’t know what he was doing. He’s wrecked his career, bec after once praising notorious Jew-hater Nick Fuentes, Hochman makes all those who defended him look like suckers. A tragedy all around — Hochman is a super-bright guy. Which is why it’s so difficult to believe that he was so naive about the Nazi sun symbol. But I’ll accept that it’s true, because I don’t want to believe the worst about somebody I respect, and the two friends I know who vouch for him are trustworthy. /end

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War for Ukraine Day 520: De Oppresso Libor

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(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Russia’s target today was Dnipro:

At least 9 civilians were injured as a result of yet another missile attack on the city of Dnipro. Among them are two children and a 77-year-old woman. The “high-precision” weapon used by russian terrorists hit an apartment building this time. Since this building was recently constructed, most of the apartments were not yet occupied, and thankfully human lives were saved as a result.

The reason Russia wanted to strike the State Security Services is that the latter have been doing a number on Russian military infrastructure in occupied Crimea over the last several weeks.

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

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Repub Venality Open Thread: Friday Alito Dump

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Josh Kovensky, for TPM:

… Rivkin regularly writes for the Journal’s opinion section, and is an attorney at law firm Baker Hostetler. It’s there that he has a key item of business before the Court: he’s part of a team representing the plaintiffs in Moore v. U.S., a case which asks the Court to upend the country’s tax system and potentially foreclose a wealth tax of the sort some Democrats have championed in recent years.

Rivkin and his co-author, editorial features editor James Taranto, disclosed in the column that Rivkin had a case before the Court. They wrote that Alito sat with them for more than four hours of interviews across two sessions, with the first taking place in April.

The column itself lavishes more than 2,400 words on Alito, praising him for a “candor that is refreshing and can be startling.” Alito used the interview to assail an effort by Senate Democrats to pass a judicial ethics bill, which would impose a code of conduct on all justices on the Court.

“Congress did not create the Supreme Court,” Alito told the interviewers. “I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it,” he added. “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”…

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Impatiently Waiting

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I am here at the Amtrak station in Chicago, waiting for my train to return home.  It’s been 4 hours since my train from Michigan brought me here.  So I’m impatiently waiting for my train, and I have mixed emotions re: the upcoming announcement of the Jan 6 indictment of the orange one.

I REALLY want it to be today, but I also really want to be here when it happens, and connectivity on the train is really spotty.  So I loaded up some recent BJ posts and loaded up some of the people I still follow on twitter – so at least I can read all of that if the internet connection doesn’t work on the train (again).

Anyway, wondering what all I missed this week.

Had a wonderful time here in Michigan with my Australian cousins, and I came really close to tears saying goodbye.

I hope to be hope by 6:30, but it’s the train, so who knows?  I think my being gone has been hard on my little Henry.  I think I mentioned that the friend who comes at dark and stays overnight with Henry described him as “being simultaneously giddy when I arrive and inconsolable that you are not here.”

Henry apparently keeps going to the door, hoping that I will be there.

So I am not the only one impatiently waiting!

Open thread.

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‘The family had a lot of buffas…’

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The night shift discussed Trump’s expanding universe of legal peril under Tom’s post here, but I’m still processing the new felony charges in the Disgraceland documents case. TPM’s summary is as follows:

  • The number of counts in the indictment swelled from 38 to 42.
  • Trump was hit with an additional charge of willful retention of national defense information (now 32 counts on that charge, up from 31) for the Iran war plan document he allegedly flaunted at Bedminster.
  • The new defendant, a MAL worker named Carlos De Oliveira, was added to the existing conspiracy to obstruct justice count, so now all three defendants are charged in this count. In addition, De Oliveira gets his own false statements count.
  • All three men were charged under a new count of altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing an object.
  • All three men were charged under a new count of corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing an object.

De Oliviera is the Disgraceland property manager, having come up through the ranks starting as a valet, according to this Forbes coverage, which also notes that neighbors describe De Oliveira as “a nice guy who kept to himself and played golf.”

But as the feds closed in, the burning question among Trump’s buffas was whether De Oliveira was “loyal.” An excerpt from the indictment, via TPM as linked above:

91. Just over two weeks after the FBI discovered classified documents in the Storage Room and TRUMP’s office, on August 26, 2022, NAUTA called Trump Employee 5 and said words to the effect of, “someone just wants to make sure Carlos is good.” In response, Trump Employee 5 told NAUTA that DE OLIVEIRA was loyal and that DE OLIVEIRA would not do anything to affect his relationship with TRUMP. That same day, at NAUTA’s request, Trump Employee 5 confirmed in a Signal chat group with NAUTA and the PAC Representative that DE OLIVEIRA was loyal. That same day, TRUMP called DE OLIVEIRA and told DE OLIVEIRA that TRUMP would get DE OLIVEIRA an attorney.

As an aside, it sure sounds like this anonymous PAC representative is ass-deep in the criming! And De Oliveira proved loyal, if as alleged he was behind the plot to destroy servers containing the surveillance footage by draining the resort’s pool into the server room.

But it’s interesting that the Trump buffas were uncertain of De Oliveira’s status so recently. Maybe the prospect of jail time will reset his loyalties. But maybe not since Trump is paying for his lawyer.

By the way, it seems…not ideal that unrelated defendants who are jointly accused of a crime can pay for each other’s legal representation. One thing I’ll say for the Trump years, the ordeal has opened my eyes to lots of problematic aspects of the executive branch and the justice system. Maybe y’all knew all along that so much depends on the honor system. I did not.

Open thread.

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Friday Morning Open Thread: Summer Simmer

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Via the Washington Post‘s Petula Dvorak, from Obama’s summer playlist. In reference to:


 
The always smart & readable Julia Ioffe, for Puck, on gatekeeping foreign affairs at the Aspen Civility Security Forum — “Where the Wild Things Are”:

The Security Forum has always been about Blobby chumminess, but this year, when the ranks of corporate sponsors—and attendees—ballooned and when the organizers made a concerted effort at bipartisanship, it seemed, at times, to go a little too far. The British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, a Tory, was interviewed by Fox News’s Martha MacCallum—as I heard, on the embassy’s insistence.

It made for quite the bizarre conversation, with MacCallum asking Cleverly about sources of disinformation and, later, Cleverly waxing philosophical about why more Americans don’t support Ukraine, as if a representative of one of the main outlets undermining that support—and sowing disinformation—weren’t sitting right next to him…

And then there were the interviews, which could be so friendly as to be pointless. How, when you have the director of the C.I.A. on stage with you at a foreign policy conference for a very limited amount of time, do you ask him, “Is there any aspect of your job that’s fun?” How do you have the Secretary of State for a one-on-one interview, and with all that’s going on in the world, ask him extensively what he thinks about women’s soccer? Then again, it’s how you demonstrate to the principals that they will be treated well here, like the humans that they are, nothing too mean or challenging, and that they should come back next year. Which, given the Aspen Security Forum’s aspirations to become the American version of the Munich Security Conference, would make sense.

But beneath this thick schmear of civility, there was, of course, drama…

Just outside, NBC colleagues were hugging a furious Andrea Mitchell. (Mitchell, who is 76, is a kind of doyenne of foreign policy journalists—in part because, despite her stature, she still acts like a hungry cub reporter one-third her age—and conducts most of the highest profile interviews at Aspen.) A minute earlier, having absolutely no idea what was going on and just saying hihowyadoin to her, Mitchell frowned deeply and said, “bad” and gestured to all this. Right at that moment, newly minted NBC natsec editor David Rohde stepped in with comfort. “I’ve never been angrier in my 45 years” in the business, Mitchell fumed.

The reason for her fury, it turned out, was that she was supposed to conduct the interview with Volodymyr Zelensky, billed as a special anonymous guest, on the conference’s last day. But Zelensky’s people insisted on having CNN’s Fareed Zakaria do the interview and the Aspen people didn’t back Mitchell up, even though NBC was an official partner of the forum—and CNN wasn’t. Said one fellow journalist, shaking their head, “You just don’t do that to Andrea Mitchell.”

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