Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

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

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

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

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

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

Accountability, motherfuckers.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

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

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

The words do not have to be perfect.

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Proud to Be A Democrat

Same As It Ever Was Open Thread: Repub Shitbirds Circle Their Shithole-in-Chief

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Never stop reminding people: Trump is not an “aberration”; Trump is every Republican when the rest of us aren’t in the room. Their only problem with Trump is that he neglects to use his inside voice when the cameras are rolling.

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Bundle Up

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Yes, this is an East-Coast-centric blog, because that’s where most of the front pagers are. And besides, those of you on the other coast (or in distant time zones) ought to be in bed by now, anyways. Thoughts & prayers to those between Florida and Maine whose personal environments weren’t meant to deal with *this* level of chill!

Apart from “not freezing”, what’s on the agenda for the day?

Since Shirley Chisolm was one of my first real-life political heroes, I truly admire this woman’s style:

And speaking of admirable political figures…

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Here’s for A Quiet Year

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(Non Sequitur via GoComics.com)
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Professor Krugman, “America Is Not Yet Lost”:

… I’m ending this year with a feeling of hope, because tens of millions of Americans have risen to the occasion. The U.S. may yet become another Turkey or Hungary — a state that preserves the forms of democracy but has become an authoritarian regime in practice. But it won’t happen as easily or as quickly as many of us had feared.

Early this year the commentator David Frum warned that the slide into authoritarianism would be unstoppable “if people retreat into private life, if critics grow quieter, if cynicism becomes endemic.” But so far that hasn’t happened.

What we’ve seen instead is the emergence of a highly energized resistance. That resistance made itself visible literally the day after Trump took office, with the huge women’s marches that took place on Jan. 21, dwarfing the thin crowds at the inauguration. If American democracy survives this terrible episode, I vote that we make pink pussy hats the symbol of our delivery from evil.

The resistance continued with the town hall crowds that confronted Republican legislators as they tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And in case anyone wondered whether the vocal anti-Trump crowds and Trump’s hugely negative polling would translate into political action, a string of special elections — capped by a giant Democratic wave in Virginia and a stunning upset in Alabama — has put such doubts to rest.

Let’s be clear: America as we know it is still in mortal danger. Republicans still control all the levers of federal power, and never in the course of our nation’s history have we been ruled by people less trustworthy.

This obviously goes for Trump himself, who is clearly a dictator wannabe, with no respect whatsoever for democratic norms. But it also goes for Republicans in Congress, who have demonstrated again and again that they will do nothing to limit his actions. They have backed him up as he uses his office to enrich himself and his cronies, as he foments racial hatred, as he attempts a slow-motion purge of the Justice Department and the F.B.I…

So it’s going to be up to the American people. They may once again have to make themselves heard in the streets. They’ll certainly have to make their weight felt at the ballot box.

It’s going to be hard, because the game is definitely rigged. Remember, Trump lost the popular vote but ended up in the White House anyway, and the midterm elections will be anything but fair. Gerrymandering and the concentration of Democratic-leaning voters in urban districts have created a situation in which Democrats could win a large majority of votes yet still fail to take the House of Representatives…

Even at best, in other words, it’s going to take a long struggle to turn ourselves back into the nation we were supposed to be. Yet I am, as I said, far more hopeful than I was a year ago. America is not yet lost.

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What’s on the agenda as we buckle down for another year?

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: The Stories We Tell Each Other

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Stephen Greenblatt, with an op-ed in the NYTimes:

… [A] team of researchers has published, in the peer-edited journal Nature Communications, the results of an extensive study of storytelling among the Agta, a contemporary population of hunter-gatherers in the Philippines. The lesson: Stories matter.

Scientists are fascinated by the few groups of hunter-gatherers remaining on the planet, since it is thought that they reflect our species’ earliest successful way of life, before the invention of agriculture. They are closely studied to solve a riddle that has long puzzled evolutionary biologists: How did humans learn cooperative behavior such as food-sharing, the care of others, the coordination of tasks, the acceptance of social norms? The answer, it seems, has everything to do with the stories we tell.

As is typical among bands of foragers, Agta stories emphasize the values of gender equality, friendship and the social acceptance of difference. Consider the following myth: “There is a dispute between the sun (male) and the moon (female) to illuminate the sky. After a fight, where the moon proves to be as strong as the sun, they agree in sharing the duty — one during the day and the other during the night.” The research established that individuals who live in camps with a greater proportion of skilled storytellers cooperate more readily with one another and are therefore more successful in their foraging.

The Agta themselves are fully aware of the benefits conferred upon them by the best makers and performers of stories. When asked to choose with whom they would most like to live, they overwhelmingly favored gifted storytellers over those who were known for their skill in hunting, fishing, tuber gathering or medicine. Life, most of those polled agreed, is simply better in the company of good stories…

Yeah, well, the people responsible for the “reporting” on the front pages of the NYTimes would probably tell you (if they were forced into honesty) that the stories they tell its readers have produced exactly the results they intended. But then, quite possibly, they’d be lying to themselves… again.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: Counting Down

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Who’s ready to start fresh, at least with a new calendar?
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Late Night Open Thread: Happy Predictions

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I predict most of us Democrats will quite happily work to improve that 59%!
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What’s on the agenda for the weekend, as we count down towards the end of 2017?

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Thursday Evening Open Thread: Dems Will Be Ready, When the Time Comes

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Greg Sargent, in the Washington Post:

The Post’s Paul Kane reports this morning that despite their rhetoric downplaying this possibility, House Democrats are privately preparing for a possible effort to impeach President Trump, should they regain the majority.

That’s excellent news. This is exactly what Democrats should be doing — right now.

Not just because an impeachment battle might actually happen, but also for another reason: Democrats will need to find a more effective way to talk to the American people about the serial degradation of our democracy we are seeing in the Trump era, for the good of the party, yes, but also for the good of the country…

… To be clear, I’m not necessarily saying impeachment is merited right at this moment. My position aligns with the persuasive argument made by Benjamin Wittes and Jane Chong that there are ample grounds for beginning a formal congressional inquiry into possible impeachment, based on the sum total of Trump’s multiplying fields of misconduct.

Publicly, Democratic leaders are urging the rank and file to play down any talk of impeachment, out of fear that it might be perceived as overreach. But there is no reason for Democrats to be apologetic about preparing for possible impeachment in certain plausible scenarios, or to shy away from treating that as a legitimate topic of public debate…


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With that being noted, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
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As a further leading indicator, on the other side of the aisle, Sen. Chelonian hastily pulls extremities into shell…

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