Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I really should read my own blog.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

All hail the time of the bunny!

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

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

The lights are all blinking red.

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

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

When we show up, we win.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

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

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

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Excellent Read: On Confronting Stove Minivan, Nascent MAGAt

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..He was exerting an active effort to not know things that could be easily known, and to demand to be convinced out of deliberate ignorance, not because he was interested in having his ideas challenged, but because he demanded a world in which he got to decide what was real.

The link from a long-term Friend of the Jackals was enough to get me to read the whole thing. A.R. Moxon, on that long-ago ‘friend’…

Minivan was a nice enough guy. He was easygoing; a happy guy with a frequently deployed smile. I don’t recall much anger from him, nor many strongly held opinions. I wouldn’t call him a philosophical type. No deep late night talks with Stove Minivan is my recollection…

So then what happened is twelve years or so later I got on The Facebook, and Stove Minivan was there, too, and before long, we were friends again, he and I, and so were me and my other college friends, and them with him, and … look, you know the drill. It was The Facebook…

Anyway, before long I noticed something about Minivan. Even though his feed was full of pictures of him and his lovely family, and he was smiling in them just the same as he always had in college, he was angry.

He was *enraged*

What was he angry about? The Demonrats…

Minivan’s worldview wasn’t particularly coherent, if you want to know the truth.

I couldn’t help to notice that the Demonrats weren’t actually doing many of the things that Minivan thought they were doing.

And I noticed other things.

For example, I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of the policies Minivan supported were directly *causing* the sorts problems that made Minivan so angry.

And I couldn’t help but notice that well-sourced information enraged him more than pretty much anything else…

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Friday Open Thread (+ Heads Up)

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I started to schedule this open thread for 2 pm, but then changed it to 11 am in the hopes that we will have some Grand Jury / Special Counsel / Indictment news this afternoon.  I will gladly take any of the three today, or all of them!

edit: Then I moved it back because other posts were up!

A quick heads up on a couple of things.

First, soccer.  This is really an open thread with a couple of PSAs, so jump right past this if you’re not interested in soccer.

Blue Guitarist let me know that the Women’s World Cup starts in less than a week.  Putting up a post for each match is a ton of work – all hail Anne Laurie for having done that for the soccer peeps for the other World Cup – but those threads don’t get a ton of action, so with lots of work and little reward, that’s not happening again.

I’m willing to try an experiment for the Women’s World Cup.

I made three soccer posts, one for each of the soccer groups (whatever they are called).  All three posts are linked in the sidebar, and each post has the schedule for that particular set.  So at the very least, you’ll have easy access to the schedule!  If you want a designated place to talk soccer for the World Cup, the 3 posts are there, or you can obviously talk soccer in any open thread.  Even though the posts won’t be on the front page, any comments will show up in recent comments, so if you comment, I imagine you’ll soon have company in the thread.

It’s an experiment, and the results may well show that there’s not enough soccer interest to do this again, but that’s what experiments are for, to be able to see the results!

Second, OzarkHillbilly.

As you know, Ozark’s family had a terrible loss, with Ozark’s brother Dave recently taking his own life. We can’t do anything tangible to help Ozark with the terrible and unexpected loss of a loved one, but there are logistical and financial issues that Dave’s wife, Renee, is having to deal with as she loses not only her husband, but also her home.  We approached Ozark to ask if we could help in some way.

So this is a heads up that we’ll put up a small GoFundMe this weekend to see if we can help, even a little bit.

Totally open thread.

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A-Hole Move (Open Thread)

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Rep. Nancy Mace seems to grasp how dangerous her party’s stance on reproductive rights is to its general electoral prospects. From Politico:

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) had sharp words for her party on Thursday about its latest divisive move on abortion access – only to wind up voting yes in the end.

“We should not be taking this fucking vote, man. Fuck,” a visibly frustrated Mace was overheard venting to her staff in an elevator, apparently referring to Thursday’s vote to reverse Biden administration policy on reimbursing travel costs for service members seeking abortions. “It’s an asshole move, an asshole amendment.”

But Mace wound up backing it anyway – as clear an indication you can get of the pressure Republicans face to support restrictions on abortion access. That’s not to mention her status as one of her party’s most unpredictable members.

Of course she voted for it anyway, then complained to a Politico staffer about the optics.

“What are we going to do for women?” she asked, pointing to a string of issues that she sees the House GOP majority as ignoring, from rape test backlogs to the foster care system to child care costs. “We have touched none of that this year. That’s my frustration.”

Welp, that’s what happens when your party spends 40-plus years catering to fanatics. Repubs got themselves into the same jam by kowtowing to Trump after it became clear he was a toxic loser. If Trump drops dead of excessive Big Macs on a golf course this afternoon, the anti-choice loons will still be a millstone around Repubs’ necks.

Speaking of fanatics (and people who hope Trump drops dead soon), Ron DeSantis is betting that he can revive his flailing campaign by consolidating Iowa evangelicals behind his candidacy, according to TPM:

While DeSantis may not have a personality, he is not plagued by the same breed of personality problems as Trump, which include his various alleged sexual assaults and sacrilege. Plus — while Trump may have paved the way for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe, DeSantis capitalized on that anti-abortion momentum to pass a six-week abortion ban in his state (a move that, so far, he rarely touts outside of certain circles).

Like all the Republican 2024ers besides Trump, DeSantis has been spending a considerable amount of time in Iowa this month. Tomorrow he plans to address The Family Leader, a large Christian organization that is made up of pastors who lean uber-conservative. The CEO of the group, Bob Vander Plaats, has faith in DeSantis’ appeal to the group, telling Politico that “America wants to turn the page” and “if you’re looking for an alternative to Trump, I think Gov. DeSantis is the frontrunner right now.”

Trump leads the field by double digits and is skipping the preacher confab. Tucker Carlson will be interviewing candidates, including DeSantis, presumably airing it on his shitty Twitter account that only fanatics watch. It’s assholes, all the way down. What could possibly go wrong?

Open thread.

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TGIFriday Morning Open Thread: Vice President Harris, Putting in the Work

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*Very* Late Night Open Thread: To Whomever Misplaced Their Cocaine in the White House…

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… Secret Service officials combed through “security systems” and indexed “several hundreds individuals” who entered the West Wing in the days preceding the discovery and were unable to identify a suspect, according to the USSS statement. The Secret Service said FBI lab results from the packaging found “insufficient DNA” and could not retrieve any fingerprints.

“Therefore, the Secret Service is not able to compare evidence against the known pool of individuals,” a statement from the USSS said.

Investigators were also unable to identify the particular moment or day when the baggie was left inside the West Wing cubby near the lower level entrance where it was discovered.

“There was no surveillance video footage found that provided investigative leads or any other means for investigators to identify who may have deposited the found substance in this area,” the agency’s statement said. “Without physical evidence, the investigation will not be able to single out a person of interest from the hundreds of individuals who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered. At this time, the Secret Service’s investigation is closed due to a lack of physical evidence.”

A source familiar with the investigation told CNN that the leading theory remains that it was left by one of the hundreds of visitors who entered the West Wing that weekend for tours and were asked to leave their phones inside those cubbies…

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Late Night Open Thread: The Tantrum Caucus Holds Another Public Recital

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Like toddlers on a sugar bender, torturing musical instruments and clutching at their overpriced tutus. Stunts only of interest to a very small circle of followers, but hey, those few are all they care about.

… The hard-line House Freedom Caucus’ latest revolt against McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) is over the National Defense Authorization Act, the law that authorizes the annual budget for the U.S. military.

That bill has historically passed with bipartisan support, and Republicans and Democrats had reached broad consensus on this year’s version, with plans to pass it by the end of the week. But Freedom Caucus members demanded a slew of controversial last-minute amendments, including measures that would ban the military from reimbursing service members who travel for abortions and prohibit the armed forces from paying for gender-affirming care. If Republicans approve these amendments, Democrats have promised to pull their support from the defense spending bill, forcing Republicans to pass it by themselves…

On Monday, 21 of their members sent McCarthy a letter with a list of demands for the government funding bill — and a threat to vote against the defense bill if they don’t get what they want. The letter, organized by Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Policy Chairman Chip Roy (R-Texas), demanded that McCarthy abandon the agreement he struck with Biden to avoid a debt default earlier this summer and authorize spending at lower levels.

Roy shrugged when asked about concerns that the Freedom Caucus might lead to a government shutdown…

Even if House conservatives succeed in making their favored changes to the spending bill, though, the current fight is unlikely to end in their victory. The Senate is still in Democrats’ hands, as is the White House, and Democratic negotiators will insist on stripping out the most controversial measures before allowing the bill to become law.

McCarthy’s most important allies recognize that reality. “The final NDAA bill, it will be bipartisan,” House Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told reporters Wednesday afternoon. “No matter what we come out of here with, we’re going to sit down and negotiate with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president. So the bill is going to move.”

“We’re working hard, harder in my opinion than we should have to work, but everything’s hard in this Congress,” Cole added ruefully a minute earlier…

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Open Thread: *International* DeSaster Tourism

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Now it’s gone (almost) global!

It was often said that when Bill Clinton walked into a room, each person thought he noticed them in particular. Clinton was the ultimate retail politician: he liked people and they knew it. When Ron DeSantis shows up, even those who want to support him feel that he harbours a special dislike for them. Being a black hole in terms of charisma is not automatically fatal to a candidate’s prospects. When your target is the diabolically charismatic Donald Trump, however, you are working at a big disadvantage.

The story of how DeSantis went from being the favourite, or near-favourite, Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential race to America’s most rapidly falling meteor in years, tells us a lot about the mindset of US conservatism. The Florida governor’s campaign began with every advantage. He had huge sums of money, name recognition, powerful backers and the sense that he was the only Republican capable of replacing Trump. Yet he has singularly failed to perform. One of his detractors memorably called this “electile dysfunction”.

In theory, the case for DeSantis was very good. Republicans would embrace Trumpism without Trump: in Florida’s youthful governor, they could have their war on woke before breakfast, lunch and dinner without the personality flaws of its namesake. DeSantis was Trump without the indictments and future jail sentences. He was Trump minus the drama. He would offer the kind of Trumpism that college graduates could vote for without apology.

It turns out there was a serious flaw: Maga voters cannot get enough of the Trump drama. The case against Trump in 2016 was that he was not electable. His base nevertheless recklessly voted for his nomination, then he went on to win. If part of the thrill of backing Trump is precisely because he is not electable — that he is unsafe and not respectable — it takes some brass to announce yourself as the electable version of Trump. It is now clear that the DeSantis hypothesis is a fatal misreading of what Maga wants…

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