Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

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

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

We still have time to mess this up!

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

Their freedom requires your slavery.

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

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

I was promised a recession.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

You cannot shame the shameless.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

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

T R E 4 5 O N

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

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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Russiagate Open Thread: Maria Butina Released from Federal Prison

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Per NPR:

… The Russian national, who pleaded guilty late last year to conspiring to act as a clandestine foreign agent, was released Friday into the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Now she’s expected to be deported quickly back to Russia.

Her release closes a fraught chapter for Butina, who for months occupied a spotlight in the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Prosecutors accused Butina of scheming to forge a connection between Moscow and the Trump administration, as well as several heavy hitters in the conservative political community — including officials at the National Rifle Association and the National Prayer Breakfast…

She still has at least one NRAphilic defender — “U.S. Rep for KY’s 4th District, Chairman 2nd Amdt Caucus, Political Science Denier”:

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Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: Norman Desmond in the WH

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“I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”

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Under the Trump Bus Open Thread: Giuliani Edition, Part the First

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NBC, this afternoon:

President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani on Monday denied being involved with a Ukrainian oligarch whose ethical issues have dovetailed with the ongoing impeachment inquiry into the president.

Giuliani also told NBC News he was not planning on visiting Dmitry Firtash, who is currently wanted on corruption charges in the U.S., during a trip to Vienna he planned last week. He said he could not speak for his two Soviet-born business associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were arrested last week on campaign-finance charges in Virginia as they were about to board one-way flights to Vienna. Giuliani has said their similarly timed Austrian trips were not in conjunction…

Giuliani also said he has “never” brought up Firtash’s extradition battle with Trump.

“I’m not even sure the president is aware of him,” Giuliani said. “I think if you asked the president ‘who is Dmitry Firtash?’ He would say ‘I don’t know.’ As far as I know, we’ve never discussed him.”…

Saturday, per the NYTimes:

President Trump had lunch on Saturday with Rudolph W. Giuliani amid revelations that prosecutors were investigating Mr. Giuliani for possible lobbying violations, and speculation that his position as the president’s personal lawyer was in jeopardy.

The lunch, at Mr. Trump’s golf course in Sterling, Va., was among several shows of the president’s support for Mr. Giuliani on Saturday. They seemed meant to tamp down questions about Mr. Giuliani’s status with a client famous for distancing himself from advisers when they encounter legal problems of their own.

Mr. Trump, during a Saturday night appearance on Fox News, called Mr. Giuliani “a great gentleman” and said he is still his lawyer. “I know nothing about him being under investigation. I can’t imagine it,” he told the host Jeanine Pirro…

Mr. Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor and New York mayor, was retained last year to help defend the president in the special counsel’s investigation.

But his efforts to undermine the investigation’s origins and its conclusions helped lead Mr. Trump into an impeachment inquiry. The inquiry focuses on whether Mr. Trump, with assistance from Mr. Giuliani, abused the presidency to pressure Ukraine to pursue investigations for his political benefit, including into whether Ukrainians played a role in spurring the inquiry of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III…

Mr. Trump was not enamored with the negative publicity around Mr. Giuliani, people close to the president said, but he remains loyal because of his lawyer’s willingness to aggressively defend him during the special counsel’s inquiry.

It is not clear what was discussed at the lunch…

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Late Night Open Thread: Courtiers to the Mad King Preznint

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Speaking of ‘small, weak & fearful’…

On the other hand, at least one RWNJ grifter — I mean, “reporter” — with a sensitive antennae for the prevailing political currents is publicly renouncing His Lardship…

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(Semi) Respite Open Thread: Area 51 Storms Back

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One the one hand, it’s sad we’ve got so much overtly political idiocy that there’s not enough space to mock mere ‘viral’ stupidity. On the other hand, Facebook ‘pranksters’ don’t need any more encouragement. Per Kotaku:

… “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” began as a joke Facebook event earlier this year. “If we naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets. Lets see them aliens,” the post read. Two million people hit “Going.” There were plans for a music fest called “Alienstock.” But in the intervening months, the Facebook event’s creator has condemned the initiative, citing a lack of infrastructure and safety issues, and the event has been removed. A spokesperson for the U.S. Air Force told the Washington Post that Area 51 “is an open training range for the U.S. Air Force, and we would discourage anyone from trying to come into the area where we train American armed forces.”

Today is the planned date of the event, and according to 13 Action News, Rachel, Nevada, is still preparing for an onslaught of alien truthers and Naruto fans…

Original ‘organizer’ Matty Roberts actually disowned the event some days ago, per the Washington Post (Sept. 10)…

… Dueling accusations of dishonesty and sabotage have derailed “Alienstock” — a Woodstock for alien watchers — which creator Matty Roberts promoted as alternative programming to any plans to storm the base on Sept. 20 despite officials’ warnings.

With just over a week to go until the event, Roberts and the host town’s website are both comparing Alienstock to the Fyre Festival, which was supposed to be held in April and May of 2017 in the Bahamas but became synonymous with “epic failure” and led to a fraud conviction. Roberts has pulled his name and support from the three-day gathering in Rachel, Nev., but the owner of a motel in the town who had signed up as a partner plans to go ahead…

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Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: Sandernistas in Disarray!

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I’m a small, petty person rooted in Irish-American grievance culture; of course I’m enjoying this…

… After a pair of setbacks this week — the acrimonious shakeup of his staff in New Hampshire on Sunday and loss of the Working Families Party’s endorsement to Elizabeth Warren a day later — Sanders’ allies and former aides are worried that recent disappointments are not one-off stumbles but rather emblematic of larger problems in his bid for the White House. The concerns are particularly acute in New Hampshire.

“Seeing the campaign not be able to outshine Warren with WFP progressives doesn’t have me questioning WFP’s process,” said Rafael Shimunov, a former national creative director for WFP and 2016 Sanders volunteer. “It has me questioning where the Bernie campaign could have done better, because I want to make sure the strongest candidate unmasks Biden and unseats Trump.”

The worries come as the campaign enters a critical, more urgent phase. After Labor Day, more voters typically tune in to an election and begin to make up their minds. Expectations for Sanders are sky-high, especially in New Hampshire, where he defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 by 22 percentage points…

Jeff Weaver, a top Sanders adviser, told POLITICO that numerous rank-and-file members in the WFP support Sanders and that his ground game in New Hampshire and other early states is strong. The Sanders campaign says it has 14 times as many identified voters in the Granite State than it had at this time in 2016 and it is doubling his field staff there from 26 to 50 employees. He said the campaign’s national and states staff are in daily contact, and that he has a regular “states call” in which he asks his aides across the country to be honest about the problems they’re seeing…

[Professional cynics point out that Tad Devine jumped ship on Sanders, but Comic Book Guy / Best Bernie Bud Weaver seems determined to hang on to the bitter end. Some of these professionals say that Weaver’s loyalty is… not necessarily the best for the Sanders campaign.]

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Late Night Petty & Venal Open Thread: Why Trump Is Mad At Debra Messing

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She (and her Will & Grace co-star, Eric McCormack) are threatening the two things he cares about most — his current grift, and his access to the company of real celebrities / rich people:

As so often happens, Tang the Conqueror only drew more attention to the event he’d been trying to keep under the radar…

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