Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

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

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

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

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

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

In my day, never was longer.

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

Bark louder, little dog.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

“Squeaker” McCarthy

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GOP Stupidity Open Thread: Erin Go Bragh to You Too, Ronna

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By the end of 2019, the FEC will be asking O’Rourke to declare GOP gotchas like this as free in-kind support…

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His Picture Is NOT In The Dictionary Next To “Good Lawyer”

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The incredible unveiling of Rudy Giuliani, Ace Defense Counsel™ continues apace, as Talking Points Memo documents:

After Giuliani claimed on Sunday that Trump never signed a letter of intent for the project, CNN obtained a copy of the letter, which contained Trump’s signature. [link in the original]

Chris Cuomo actually had the gall, the infinite gall, to brandish the signed letter, complete w. Donald Trump’s self-implicating scrawl, on live camera!  What’s an Ace Defense Counsel™ to do?

Never fear, never flinch, and always remember the last refuge of the fidelity-challenged: “who you going to believe, me, or your lying eyes.”

In the interview with the Daily News, Giuliani refused to acknowledge that he told CNN Sunday that “no one signed the letter.”

“I don’t think I said nobody signed it,” Giuliani told the Daily News.

Ummm.  Rudy.  There is videotape!

Anyway, says Ace Defense Counsel™, what’s a little light conflict of interest.  Seriously, folks, what do you expect a perpetually-skating-the-edge-of-bankruptcy to do?  And who the f**k cares anyway?

But Giuliani argued during an interview with New York Daily News that the letter is “bullshit because it didn’t go anywhere.” [link in the original]

According to this line of analysis by our Ace Defense Counsel™, if an attempted coition fails to reach fruition, it don’t count.   That is, one can remain mostly virginal, as long as you don’t fully enjoy yourself.

This is funny.  It really is.  It would be more so, of course, if it wasn’t so damn serious, if this weren’t the state of affairs that emerges when small time and stupid crooks wield enormous power.

But even as we live in fear for our selves, our republic, and the world…we can still take unfeigned pleasure at the sight of Rudy Noun-Verb-911 Giuliani showing himself to everyone being what New Yorkers have known for a long time: a Flatbush fugazi.
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Images:  Jean de Paleologu, Poster for Loïe Fuller at the Folies Bergère, 1897.
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Albrecht Cuyp, Cows in a River, c. 1650

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Trump Crime Cartel Open Thread: Infinite Klassiness

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BUT SERIOUSLY…


Corsi, Klayman, and Stone — like everyone else in Trump’s orbit — are bad people who deserve every unpleasant thing that (I devoutly hope) they are about to experience.

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Thursday Morning Open Thread: Happy Thanksgiving!

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Remember: Stretch waistbands, and nothing that has to be dry-cleaned…

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I am so not surprised

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Over the summer, there were plenty of headlines declaring major pharmaceutical companies either holding off on price increases or rolling back list prices on some of their drugs.

This news generated Trump positive headlines within the framework that he could convince Pharma to give better deals than anyone else. And Pharma went along as it was a cheap give until the election. And now that the election is over; shocking events have occurred.

This is the same PR play that Fortune 500 companies played last December where they rolled out regular bonus programs and attributed the cause to the tax cuts that were just passed. And then they kept on doing whatever it was that they were going to do without regard to the tax cuts. It was cheap PR and a political favor that they could bank at low cost beyond a press release.

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Be A Masshole!

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This is without doubt my favorite ad of the cycle.

Backstory:  In 2016, Massachusetts approved a law that adds gender identity to the list of reasons people can’t be discriminated against in public spaces.

This year, bigots opponents managed to place a question on the ballot that would repeal the law. Somewhat confusingly, the question is worded so that it takes a “yes” vote to retain the law — a quirk of drafting (perhaps deliberate) that casts some doubt on the polling that shows a two to one edge here opposed to discriminating against trans people.  I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re all good, but I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the following is a perfect little slice of campaign art:

Open thread, y’all.

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Calling Cheryl and Adam, Impending Nuclear Holocaust Edition

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Somehow I missed this kinda important story this weekend:

Donald Trump has confirmed the US will leave an arms control treaty with Russia dating from the cold war that has kept nuclear missiles out of Europe for three decades.

“We’ll have to develop those weapons,” the president told reporters in Nevada after a rally. “We’re going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to pull out.”

Trump was referring to the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty (INF), which banned ground-launch nuclear missiles with ranges from 500km to 5,500km. Signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, it led to nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles being eliminated, and an end to a dangerous standoff between US Pershing and cruise missiles and Soviet SS-20 missiles in Europe.

No prizes for guessing whose fingerprints are all over this measured, well thought out decision:

The Guardian reported on Friday that Trump’s third national security adviser, John Bolton, a longstanding opponent of arms control treaties, was pushing for US withdrawal.

There are arguments! There always are.  In this case, it’s an allegation that Russia is violating the agreement w. a cruise missile development program, and that China is looming, outside the treaty.  I’m way out of the zone of what passes for my expertise here, so I’ll leave it to Cheryl and/or Adam to weigh in on these claims. Here I’ll just note both claims have the look of assertions that are drummed into service to fill in the gaps marked “pretextual verbiage needed here” on the form providing cover for what one wants to do anyway.

That view is strengthened, I think, by the fact that there isn’t a single arms control treaty these bloody incompetents have ever liked.

Bolton and the top arms control adviser in the National Security Council (NSC), Tim Morrison, are also opposed to the extension of another major pillar of arms control, the 2010 New Start agreement with Russia, which limited the number of deployed strategic warheads on either side to 1,550. That agreement, signed by Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev, then president of Russia, is due to expire in 2021.

The early reviews for this buried, weekend news dump are what you’d expect:

Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said: “This is a colossal mistake. Russia gets to violate the treaty and Trump takes the blame.

“I doubt very much that the US will deploy much that would have been prohibited by the treaty. Russia, though, will go gangbusters.”

Old friend Mikhail Gorbachev adds:

Gorbachev, 87, wondered aloud: “Is it really that hard to understand that rejecting these agreements is, as the people say, not the work of a great mind.”

Concur

Gorbachev called Trump’s decision “a mistake” and “very strange.”

“Do they really not understand in Washington what this can lead to?” he asked.

Concur.

And doubly, trebly concur with this:

“All agreements aimed at nuclear disarmament and limiting nuclear weapons must be preserved, for the sake of preserving life on earth,” he added, per the Times.

This is the true measure of the GOP betrayal of America.  They knew who Donald Trump was long before he became President. They knew — hell the candidates, Cruz and Graham and the rest said so out loud — that he was the last person you’d want near the nuclear button.  And yet when the choice came down to tax cuts and an anti-abortion SC vs the safety and security of the United States…

They all got in line.  We, and the world, are in ever deeper peril as a result.

Oh — and one more thing? How is this not a huge story? Republican maladministration wants Europe back on a hair trigger?  I’m looking at the New York Times home page and it isn’t there.  Our media iz not lerning.

Image: Simone del Tintore (attr.), Still Life with Mushrooms, Fruit, a Basket of Flowers and a Cat, before 1708.

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