Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

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

Every day Vance writes another chapter in the book called “Worst VP Pick Ever”.

There is one struggling party in US right now, and it’s not the Democrats.

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

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

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

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

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

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

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

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

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

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

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Second rate reporter says what?

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

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

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

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Republican Stupidity

Late Night Open Thread: JD Vance & the Rage Furby, Texting Buddies

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Some of you vintage blog readers may remember Chuck ‘Floorsh*tter’ Johnson, a/k/a ‘Not the Little Green Footballs Charles Johnson’, going back to the days when he was a favorite chewtoy at Tbogg’s joint. He bobs up like a turd in the right-wing septic tank every so often, but until I did a cursory search on earlier posts here, I’d completely forgotten he was another one of Peter Thiel’s ‘intellectual’ beneficiaries.

So *of course* when the Rage Furby reached out to a newbie Repub senator, he would not be shunted off for an intern to deal with… Per the Washington Post, “JD Vance in texts with far-right figure: Profane and off-the-cuff” [gift link]:

The day after JD Vance was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022, he received a congratulatory text from Charles Johnson, a blogger and entrepreneur who has zealously promoted right-wing conspiracy theories.

Johnson assumed the posture of a wise mentor, cautioning the first-time officeholder to choose his staff carefully and repeatedly pressing him on his committee assignments. “Got to keep you out of trouble,” wrote Johnson, who now describes himself as a government informant seeking to protect the United States from foreign influence.

Their correspondence over the next 20 months — extending into the weeks before former president Donald Trump picked Vance as his running mate — offers a glimpse of the Republican vice-presidential nominee’s off-the-cuff musings, often matching his public expressions but voiced with much less polish and more profanity. Vance was just as casual in discussing America’s foreign alliances as he was in evaluating his own private alliances with the GOP’s moneyed class. With Johnson, he pondered responsibility for the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines and crudely described his aversion to the Ukrainian government and refusal to consider its pleas for U.S. assistance.

“Dude I won’t even take calls from Ukraine,” he told Johnson in October, about three weeks after House Republicans blocked additional aid to help Kyiv repel the Russian invasion. “Two very senior guys reached out to me. The head of their intel. The head of the Air Force. Bitching about F16s.”

In response to questions about his correspondence with Johnson, Vance spokesman William Martin said the two were never close and don’t share the same politics. “Chuck Johnson spam texted JD Vance,” Martin said. “JD usually ignored him, but occasionally responded to push back against things he said.”…

The mostly friendly conversation with Johnson reflects how Vance gravitates to people on the political fringe — a cohort emboldened by Trump’s insurgent campaign in 2016 and highly active online in the years since. After Trump picked Vance as his running mate on July 15, Johnson has been criticizing his onetime interlocutor and threatening to release their communications. He said he has grown disillusioned with Vance, especially over the senator’s favorable view of the Israeli prime minister, and now supports President Biden and Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

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Harris & Walz Fight for Red State Citizens

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In an homage to himself and the colossally unself-aware sloganeering featured in his flaming Hindenburg of a GOP primary campaign, shitty far-right Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently wasted $60K in taxpayer funds to change state line welcome signs to read “Welcome to the free state of Florida.” (Source: Tampa Bay Times)

It probably won’t matter in the final Electoral College* tally, but as one of the taxpayers whose contributions have been wasted on the sour kumquat’s hard-right vanity projects, I’m grateful that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have both been attacking the DeSantis anti-freedom agenda for years and hope they keep it up throughout the next 90 days.

Last year, when the DeSantis admin dumbed down the public school black history curriculum to protect the extra-dainty feelings of white snowflakes, Harris came to Jacksonville to call the change what it is: distorting history with far-right propaganda and lies. (Source: NPR) This year, she visited the state after the 6-week abortion ban became law and said “the government should never come between [a woman] and her doctor.”

Meanwhile, from his perch as a fellow governor, Walz has steadily slagged his odious Florida counterpart: (Source: TBT)

On social media, Walz has posted articles about books being removed from Florida school shelves, saying that “while we’re focused on banishing hunger with free breakfast and lunch, they’re focused on banning books, bullying LGBTQ+ students, and attacking teachers.”

In response to Florida effectively banning AP Psychology last year because the curriculum acknowledged the existence of people who are LGBTQ, Walz said, “My message stays the same: If you want to live in the year 2023, come to Minnesota. We’re protecting freedoms here – not taking them away.”

DeSantis talks often about all of the people who have moved to Florida since he became governor to flee liberal states. Walz, in an interview with NBC News last year, said Minnesota’s track record could appeal to people wanting to leave Florida and find another home.

“Like no time in my lifetime, the choice in states you could pick could not be greater,” he said in the NBC interview. “Folks don’t really care about the woke corporation fights, they care about the roads and water treatment plants.”

If I wouldn’t literally freeze to death in Minnesota, I might consider it, Governor Walz.

DeSantis takes credit for the sun, spinning the in-migration as a response to his crackpot far-right policies rather than the continuation of a trend that has seen the state’s population nearly triple in my lifetime. (It’s the sunshine and lack of a state tax, stupid!)

Anyhoo, “more of this, please,” etc. It’s meaningful to Democrats in red states when our national leaders push back on the fascist GOP culture war bullshit that takes away our freedoms, makes it harder for us to access healthcare and complicates raising our families.

Open thread.

*After we cross “crush fascism” off the to-do list, we should really make a more sustained effort to abolish the anti-democratic vestige of deference to slave states known as the Electoral College. The appeal could be fairly simple: In a democracy, all of our voices matter, so let’s stop making the citizens of a handful of swing states super-voters whose ballots outweigh everyone else’s. Maybe framing it as a fairness issue could work. 

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Odds & Ends (Open Thread)

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Is it Friday already? Days of the week are meaningless here in Happy Funville. That said, the news has been a lot more fun since the, uh, vibe shift in the 2024 election.

Exhibit A, did you know Trump is now too fucking old to be president? Even Republicans acknowledge that: (Newsweek)

In a fresh polling blow for Donald Trump, a majority of Republican voters have said they would prefer a president who is younger than the 78-year-old former commander-in-chief.

In a YouGov poll conducted between July 25-29, 59 percent of Republicans surveyed said they would prefer a president under the age of 75. Trump celebrated his 78th birthday in June. Forty percent said they had no preference, and just two percent said they would prefer a president over the age of 75.

After reveling in the media’s “Biden is old” chorus for years, even as their own candidate decayed before our eyes, now Trump and his shitty campaign say age is just a number:

“It’s not about age, it’s about competence…a Trump campaign spokesperson told Newsweek…

This latest poll could suggest the tables are turning on Trump, who regularly attacked his former rival, President Joe Biden, over his age. Biden is 81.

Trump seemed to row back on this sentiment at recent remarks at a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

“81 is not old,” Trump said, and now Biden has withdrawn from the race, Trump is faced with a substantially younger competitor in Vice President Kamala Harris, who will turn 60 just weeks before Election Day.

Good luck to the self-masticated lump of vintage Naugahyde and the henchmen who are trying to sell that!

Continuing with the general twin Trump campaign themes of pathetic and weak, Trump surrogates are trying to steal the limelight from Joe Biden by claiming credit for the prisoner swap. The sofa-shagger weighs in: (The Hill)

“But we have to ask ourselves: Why are they coming home? And I think it’s because bad guys all over the world recognize Donald Trump’s about to be back in office, so they’re cleaning house,” he said. “That’s a good thing, and I think it’s a testament to Donald Trump’s strength.”

(Slurp slurp!) The non-entity from North Dakota had similar thoughts: (The Hill)

“The reason why Russia wanted to do the deal now is that they think that President Trump’s gonna win and they don’t want to deal with him,” [Doug] Burgum said in comments.

As every schoolchild knows, it’s weak and pathetic to take credit for someone else’s work. When asked about Trump’s preposterous attempt to steal credit, Biden very sensibly asked, “Why didn’t he do it when he was president?”

Answer, as Biden noted while announcing the deal: the task required the participation of allies. Multinational collaboration is a skillset He Who Does Not Play Well With Others conspicuously lacks. (There’s also the matter of Trump being Putin’s obsequious toady.)

***

Here’s an item that may be of interest to the many ambitious home cooks who comment in this space — a tongue-in-cheek analysis of the stack of cookbooks in Kamala Harris’s kitchen: (Esquire)

Odds & Ends (Open Thread)

Here is a person whose horizons are broad but whose focus is pragmatic. What is immediately clear is that, if these cookbooks are indicators of an overall umwelt, Harris values the restorative powers of cooking—not individually but as part of a community. In other words, she cooks not just for herself but for others. She understands food not simply as caloric intake but as identity.

The best cooks do! Also, it warms my heart to see Louisiana Kitchen in that stack.

Have we ever had a competent cook in charge of the country? I can’t recall one. The article speculates that Biden visits the kitchen only to raid the freezer for ice cream, which seems fair. He’s a good president even without apparent cooking skills, but maybe a candidate’s approach to food — and sharing it — says something meaningful nonetheless.

***

Looking ahead, Harris will announce a VP pick soon, and the DNC is coming up fast. The potential lack of media attention on Trump and the sofa-shagger may cause them to wilt like water-dashed wicked witches.

Or maybe they’ll do or say additional stupid things to attract the media herd. Who knows? Who cares? Trump and Vance are the worst kind of weirdos — stale and boring!

I’m interested in Harris’s VP decision (pick Pete!) but don’t believe any of the candidates being vetted would fundamentally change the race. If she can wring a point or two out of a battleground state with a VP pick, it sounds like she should do so.

That’s all I’ve got. Open thread!

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Late Night Open Thread: WEIRD — The GOP (Non) Rebuttal

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To save you a click: Because Trump and Vance, and a great many of their fellow Repubs, are weird!

In the collection below, I’ve deliberately stuck to GOP professionals — no street-level MAGAts competing for each other’s applause, mockery of which could (probably has) filled whole volumes. (Also not included: Roger Stone, who’s made Creepy Weird his entire brand as well as personality.)

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Late Night Open Thread: Somewhere, LBJ Is Laughing

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The tactic is now such a GOP staple that its origins have probably been forgotten, but here’s how Hunter S. Thompson described it in Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72:

“This is one of the oldest and most effective tricks in politics. Every hack in the business has used it in times of trouble, and it has even been elevated to the level of political mythology in a story about one of Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas.

“The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumour campaign about his opponent’s life-long habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows.

“Christ, we can’t get away with calling him a pig-f****r,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.”

“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofab****h deny it.”

Thing is, the rumor only takes flight when its target seems like a plausible pig (or couch) fvcker..

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And He’s Still Rambling On…

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I only know that because I went to turn on the 10 pm news and there he was…how long has it been?

Pretty much this…

 

And I want to post what Adam said down thread:

Second, I just want to make a quick point about all the sturm and drang around whether President Biden needs to stay or go. It is important to remember that the Democratic Party today is really a coalition of what would be medium to smaller parties that have a lot of overlapping interests and objectives, but also some significant differences. As the GOP has consolidated into a party with a much narrower constituency, everyone else either finds their way to the Democratic Party of just gives up on political parties. So the Democratic Party absorbs everyone that either is not tolerated in the Republican Party of 2024 or is repulsed by it. And this gets us to the point I want to make. If this whole dispute over if Biden should remain the nominee or withdraw and turn things over to VP Harris or there should be a three week primary or the convention should just be brokered were an actual political warfare operation to break the Democratic Party into smaller parties that can’t garner a majority, what would be done differently? My professional assessment is nothing. Nothing would be done differently. Whether this really started as a political warfare operation or whether a variety of domestic and foreign actors just latched on to and amplified the vendetta that Sulzberger at The NY Times started and is pursuing because President Biden won’t give his paper an interview doesn’t really matter at this point. All that matters is the effects being achieved.

I’m off to put the ducks to bed…they’ll bitch at me because I’m late, but I got busy.

Let me know when the orchestra plays him off….

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RNC Open Thread: Liars in Love

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RNC Open Thread:

(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)

 
I went to check on how things were going in Milwaukee today, and this was my first hit:

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