Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

I did not have this on my fuck 2024 bingo card.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Not all heroes wear capes.

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

This blog will pay for itself.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Cancel the cowardly WaPo and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

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

Books are my comfort food!

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Let me file that under fuck it.

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Cruz-ifiction

Late Night “Yup, Still the Wrong Choice” Open Thread

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From the NYTimes article:

… After declaring that he had unified the party in one of the most “love-filled” conventions in political history, Mr. Trump launched an extended diatribe against Mr. Cruz, who pointedly declined to endorse him during his own convention speech on Wednesday and instead urged people to vote their conscience. The speech embarrassed Mr. Trump and cast a shadow of discord over the convention, which had already been marred by plagiarism in a speech by Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania, on Monday.

“I don’t want his endorsement,” Mr. Trump said angrily, in a rambling stream-of-consciousness performance that seemed half stand-up routine, half vengeful rant. “If he gives it, I won’t accept it.”

The remarks were a noteworthy display of lingering tension within the party and Mr. Trump’s inability to let go of grudges.

They also represented a seemingly inevitable reappearance of Mr. Trump’s irrepressible id. Having spoken from a teleprompter for more than an hour on Thursday, the final day of his convention, he seemed almost incapable of restraining himself any longer as the campaign moved into its next phase…

Mr. Trump briefly turned his focus from Mr. Cruz to Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, who will be formally nominated next week at her party’s convention in Philadelphia. Attention is expected to shift to the Democrats in the coming days, but Mr. Trump said that he did not expect to watch Mrs. Clinton’s speech because she is “boring.”…

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Late Night “Yup, Still the Wrong Choice” Open ThreadPost + Comments (159)

The RNC in Cleveland: Threat Level Plaid

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The RNC in Cleveland: Threat Level PlaidPost + Comments (44)

Open Thread: Your 2020 Republican God-King Presidential Candidate, America!

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Anybody with more than ten minutes’ exposure to Ted Cruz expected something terrible during his speech tonight, but HOLEE FARKING 1968, BATMAN!

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Open Thread: Your 2020 Republican <del>God-King</del> Presidential Candidate, America!Post + Comments (327)

Open Thread: Return of the Cruz-ifiction Candidate

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With the Democrats openly rebelling against the NRA (and the GOP candidate flailing on all fronts), a call went out in search of a New Hope. And guess who happened to be waiting by the phone…

From the Hill, yesterday:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) attended a confidential dinner with more than 20 top conservatives on Tuesday night to plan his comeback as a movement leader in the mold of Ronald Reagan.

The dinner was at the Virginia home of conservative activist Brent Bozell, and the agenda was to plot Cruz’s future and the future of the conservative movement.

The undertone of the dinner was about how to position Cruz for a future tilt at the presidency and to spearhead the conservative movement from his seat in the Senate, those in attendance said.

Dining with Cruz and his chief of staff, Paul Teller, were some of the most powerful figures in the conservative movement.

The spectrum of economic, national security and social conservatives seated at the table included Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint, Club for Growth President David McIntosh, direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie, National Rifle Association board member and former Cincinnati Mayor Ken Blackwell, and Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser, sources confirmed…

Many of the leaders at the dinner want Cruz to run for president again, and they are viewing Cruz’s unsuccessful 2016 run as similar to Reagan’s failed attempt in 1976 to unseat the incumbent Republican president, Gerald Ford…

Reagan gave the grifting bigots of the “Moral Majority” a comfy seat at the top table, back in the day when AIDS was still a mysterious new “gay plague”. And as far as these good Christianists are concerned, it’s not as though the Orlando massacre involved, you know, actual American people — just “pawns of the devil“…

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Never Forget Open Thread: Don’t Take Your Eye Off That Cruz Guy

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If #Failgunner Ted is currently refudiating the Short-Fingered Vulgarian, it means he thinks it’s better to wait for Deadbeat Donald to crash’n’burn in November, by which time the “Cruz 2020: He TOLD You So” campaign will be ramping up. Because it’s not like it’s so hard to win favor with his fellow Repubs…

… unless you’re Ted Cruz, because nobody likes Ted Cruz. For good reason.

Never Forget Open Thread: Don’t Take Your Eye Off That Cruz GuyPost + Comments (95)

This Is One For Every Patriots-Hater Out There

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The invaluable Charles Pierce on Donald Trump’s distinct political superpower:

It was Jeb (!) Bush who learned the second-worst thing for a candidate to be if he’s running against He, Trump—which is a humorless, privileged fop. The worst thing to be is what the Tailgunner was—a self-important dweeb with delusions of sacred grandeur. In both cases, you are a big bag of hot air in search of a needle. That is He, Trump’s only consistent political skill. No wonder Tom Brady loves him. Nobody is more skilled at deflating people than He, Trump.

I’d add — it’s hard for me to read this as anything but Barack I’m-So-Going-To-Miss-This-President Obama’s parting gift to that self important dweeb with delusions of sacred grandeur:

The White House is considering the creation of a national monument to the gay rights movement on a small piece of Greenwich Village parkland across the street from the Stonewall Inn, where a 1969 uprising helped inspire the push for equality, advocates said on Tuesday.

I know, I know. Not a done deal yet; just kicking the tires; who thought to get this out there today…

But still, even if it is a coincidence (and I’m really not sure that it is), a fine story becomes that much sweeter juxtaposed with Torquemada Cruz (you can’t torque ’em ada anything) on the occasion of his exit, stage far right.

Pedro_Berruguete_Saint_Dominic_Presiding_over_an_Auto-da-fe_1495

So yeah, while as many here have noted, Trump is a terrifying existential threat to the idea of the Republic, I still get some naches any day that Ted Cruz gets his comeuppance upside and down.

Open, the thread, it is.

Pedro Berruguete, Saint Dominic Presiding Over an Auto-da-fe, 1495

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Open Thread: (Character) Assassins on the Loose in Indiana!

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This is 2016, and #LeeHarveyOswald is trending on Twitter, because such is the state of the Republican presidential campaign. Per Politico:

Donald Trump on Tuesday alleged that Ted Cruz’s father was with John F. Kennedy’s assassin shortly before he murdered the president, parroting a National Enquirer story claiming that Rafael Cruz was pictured with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963…

“I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?” Trump continued. “It’s horrible.”

Trump’s tangent followed his rebuke of Rafael Cruz using the pulpit to court evangelicals for his son.

“I implore, I exhort every member of the body of Christ to vote according to the word of God and vote for the candidate that stands on the word of God and on the Constitution of the United States of America,” Rafael Cruz said in a video clip aired by Fox News. “And I am convinced that man is my son, Ted Cruz. The alternative could be the destruction of America.”

Asked to respond, Trump called it a disgrace. “I think it’s a disgrace that he’s allowed to do it. I think it’s a disgrace that he’s allowed to say it,” he said, before touting his support from Jerry Falwell Jr. and other evangelical leaders.

“You look at so many of the ministers that are backing me, and they’re backing me more so than they’re backing Cruz, and I’m winning the evangelical vote,” Trump continued. “It’s disgraceful that his father can go out and do that. And just — and so many people are angry about it. And the evangelicals are angry about it, the way he does that.”…

Failgunner Ted promptly returned fire, per the LA Times:

… “This man is a pathological liar,” Cruz said. “He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth.”…

Cruz called Trump “a narcissist at a level that I don’t think this country has ever seen. … Everything in Donald’s world is about Donald.” Not only that, Cruz said, Trump is “utterly amoral. Morality does not exist for him.”…

For good measure, Cruz also called Trump a “serial philanderer.”

“And he boasts about it … describes his battle with venereal disease as his own personal Vietnam,” Cruz added…

Me, I’m rooting for injuries. But the Sad! part — to quote one contestant — is that we all know where this will devolve, once Cruz has lost his final primaries…

Open Thread: (Character) Assassins on the Loose in Indiana!Post + Comments (170)