Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

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

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

This fight is for everything.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

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

Tick tock motherfuckers!

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

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Republicans in disarray!

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

This blog will pay for itself.

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PA-18, Once Again: Change of Plans!

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ETA:

Previously…

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PA Special Election Pt. III (& Re-counting?)

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The Repubs are scrambling to explain that the margins are so narrow as to make this election meaningless, and also Conor Lamb is practically a Republican anyways, and besides the district is due to go away come November. So… looking good for Sen. Lamb, so far!

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Down to the Wire in PA

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If Accuweather is to be believed, the Pittsburgh area is far enough inland that only “flurries” are predicted today. I’m partisan enough to hope it discourages the elderly FOX-watching voters, but not their Democratic neighbors…

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Late Night Open Thread: Good for Gov. Moonbeam

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That’s quite an analogy, but IMO it holds up. CNN on Sessions’ CA visit:

California Gov. Jerry Brown fired back at Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President Donald Trump on Wednesday after their lawsuit challenging the state’s immigration laws, calling the administration “full of liars” and repeatedly referencing the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election…

“I do think this is pure red meat for the base, and I would assume — this is pure speculation — that Jeff thinks Donald will be happier with him and I bet Donald will be tweeting his joy with this stunt,” Brown said.

Special counsel Robert “Mueller is closing in. There are more indictments to come. So obviously the attorney general has found it hard to be just a normal attorney general. He’s been caught up in the whirlwind,” Brown added.

Brown accused the administration of “going to war” with California and said Sessions was acting “more like Fox News than a law enforcement officer” in his visit…

In a speech laden with tough rhetoric for his critics and immigration advocates, Sessions on Wednesday morning had decried officials who support sanctuary city policies as “extremists” promoting “open borders.”

“Stop treating immigration agents differently from everybody else for the purpose of eviscerating border and immigration laws and advancing an open borders philosophy shared by only a few, the most radical extremists,” Sessions said.

Gov. Brown and AG Becerra make a great tag team, too — NPR’s Judy Woodruff showed up with a mouthful of whutaboudism pap, and this ensued:

Judy Woodruff:Attorney General Becerra, what do you say to Attorney General Sessions’ charge that California has essentially, I mean, in his words, enacted a number of laws designed to “intentionally obstruct the work of our sworn immigration enforcement officers,” to intentionally undermine their ability to do their jobs?

Xavier Becerra:Well, it’s an intentional misrepresentation.

If you just simply read the laws, most of those statutes say from the very beginning, except as required by federal law, we will do this. Or they actually point out the statute that the Trump administration has tried to sue California on, where we actually cite the words of the statute in those provisions of law that we have in California that essentially protect the federal government’s right to enforce immigration law.

And so they continue to say these things, but the statutes that they point to that say that — restrict the ability of ICE to do its work are the very statutes that say that we exempt federal law, or we allow federal law to take precedent over anything that the state law says…

Gov. Jerry Brown:Yes. And, by the way, the attorney general got a very tepid response. I think,out of 200 people, 10 people stood up after he gave his speech.

And the most important police chiefs support these bills. They don’t support Jeff Sessions.

Judy Woodruff: Very quickly, Governor, President Trump is going to be in California next week. Do you have plans to meet with him?

Gov. Jerry Brown: Well, he hasn’t let me know.

By the way, we called Sessions’ office, the attorney general’s office, are you coming out? They wouldn’t even take the call. But they notified the press.

This is press release politics. I don’t know whether — Trump, he can call me on the phone. I have talked to him before about disaster relief. We had a very fine conversation.

So, look, I want to collaborate, but I’m not going to be complicit with lies and denigrating the great state of California.

Yeah, I somehow suspect Governor Brown’s invitation to the Trump rally won’t be forthcoming.

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Interesting Read: (How Soon) Will the GOP Lose Orange County?

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To those of us old enough to remember the Reagan years, the phrase “Orange County is Republican” was one of those unfortunate unshakeable verities, like “AIDS is a swift death sentence.” CNN’s article here is riddled with idiot bothsiderism, but it just might be one more proof that everything Trump touches dies:

If recent population trends continue at their current pace, it’s likely that by Election Day this November, minorities will constitute the majority of the population in the Congressional District centered on this prospering small city in Orange County about an hour south of Los Angeles.

That places the 45th Congressional District of California, whose seat is now held by Republican Rep. Mimi Walters, at the forefront of a trend that’s steadily reshaping the landscape of House seats across the country: the inexorable growth of racial and ethnic diversity…

For decades, Orange County sent conservative firebrands such as Robert Dornan and William Dannemeyer to the House and was so reliably red that President Ronald Reagan famously joked it was where all good Republicans went to die. After Franklin Roosevelt carried the county in his landslide first re-election in 1936, no Democratic presidential candidate won it again until 2016, when Hillary Clinton narrowly beat Donald Trump there.

Now Democrats are mobilizing to mount their most serious challenge yet against Walters, a low-key former mayor of coastal Laguna Niguel and state legislator first elected to Congress in 2014. Democrats are also pressing hard for the neighboring Orange County seat held by Republican Dana Rohrabacher, as well as the open seats being vacated by GOP Reps. Ed Royce and Darrell Issa, who are retiring.

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Monday Morning Open Thread: LIKE A QUEEN!

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Sometimes the internet doesn’t suck. Per the Washington Post

Parker Curry, age 2, was not being cooperative.

Standing in front of the new painting of former first lady Michelle Obama at the National Portrait Gallery, Parker ignored her mother’s pleas to turn around for a photo.

“All I wanted was just one pic,” Parker’s mother, Jessica Curry, said Sunday. “She was just so fixated on the portrait and wouldn’t turn away from it.”

Curry, a lifelong District resident, was so fixated on her daughter being fixated on the portrait that she didn’t see a man to the side taking a cellphone photo of the moment — Parker in utter awe, her mouth agape.

The next morning, Curry said, her phone “blew up.”

The man to the side — ­37-year-old Ben Hines of Alexandria — posted the photo on Facebook. It went really, really viral. And suddenly, little Parker went from being a little difficult to being more than a little famous.

The photo, taken Thursday, has been shared, liked, tweeted, retweeted and Instagrammed thousands of times around the world. Obama reacted with not one but three heart-eye emoji…

Parker, in her less than 36 months alive, has become a big admirer of the former first lady. She especially enjoyed seeing Obama dance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” After seeing the portrait, Parker thinks Obama is a “queen.”

(Curry is not certain her daughter knows that Michelle’s husband is former president Barack Obama or that he even ­exists.)…

Buzzfeed has a quote from the artist, Amy Sherald:

… When I look at this picture I think back to my first field trip in elementary school to a museum. I had only seen paintings in encyclopedias up to that point in my life. There was a show up of work by painter @thebobartlett whose work still inspires me to this day. There was a painting of a black man standing in front of a house. I don’t remember a lot about my childhood, but I do have a few emotional memories etched into my mind forever and seeing that painting of a man that looked like he could be my father stopped me dead in my tracks… I knew I wanted to be an artist already, but seeing that painting made me realize that I could. What dreams may come?… #representationmatters

I don’t know if Parker will actually remember the moment in this photo, but I can attest that some of my very earliest memories are of specific museum exhibits (an Egyptian lion-headed sculpture at the Metropolitan, a tiny perfect Peruvian silver llama at the Heyes) — and, of course, she’s got this picture to remind her now.

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Friday Morning Open Thread: Spring Will Come, in Its Own Sweet Time

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Happy Holi to those of us who celebrate the Indian festival of colors!

… The Holi festival has a cultural significance among various Hindu traditions of the Indian subcontinent. It is the festive day to end and rid oneself of past errors, to end conflicts by meeting others, a day to forget and forgive. People pay or forgive debts, as well as deal anew with those in their lives. Holi also marks the start of spring, for many the start of the new year, an occasion for people to enjoy the changing seasons and make new friends…

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Speaking of new starts…

Friday Morning Open Thread: Spring Will Come, in Its Own Sweet TimePost + Comments (306)