Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

This really is a full service blog.

The words do not have to be perfect.

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

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

This fight is for everything.

I was promised a recession.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

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

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

The willow is too close to the house.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Second rate reporter says what?

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Warren / Castro 2020!

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Because this is *my* happy place, right now…

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Happy Birthday, Hayao Miyazaki

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Miyazaki is renowned for a number of excellent movies, but my personal favorite will always be My Neighbor Totoro. If only in tribute to my personal Mai, the baby sister who resolutely refuses to accept ‘It can’t be helped’ as the global default.

Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro was released in Japan 30 years ago to little fanfare. Misjudged by financiers and shoehorned into a double bill with Isao Takahata’s much-anticipated Grave of the Fireflies, Totoro trod water until slowly, surely, it became one of the most beloved animated feature films of all time…

Some believe Totoro to be a Kami (a spirit tied to nature) belonging to the camphor tree which Mei falls onto the belly of while she’s out playing. The tagline on the original Japanese poster translates as, “These strange creatures still exist in Japan. Supposedly,” which summons thoughts of old souls and endless wisdom. Ultimately, you can project whatever you want onto Totoro. Even Miyazaki leaves open the possibility that the creatures in the film don’t really exist (although he solemnly believes it to be real, as do I)…

Aside from Totoro making a killing in merchandise revenue, those who are familiar with Miyazaki can trace the film’s modern success to his stubborn moral mind. Reluctant to put his characters into straightforward ‘good’ and ‘evil’ boxes, the Ghibli stalwart nevertheless rewards the pure of heart and punishes greed and gluttony. It’s a trait that wasn’t missed by Roger Ebert, who described Totoro’s small kingdom as, “the world we should live in, not the one that we occupy.”

As McCarthy explains, “[Totoro] extended the studio’s positive green and social credentials by tying itself so firmly into a simpler time and a society ruled by nature. I think Miyazaki does two very difficult things in this film with considerable delicacy and grace: he makes a film at a child’s pace and on a child’s level; and he allows death to assume a major role in the movie without demonising or personalising death. It’s also consummately beautiful. After almost thirty years of watching it several times a year, it still surprises me with its capacity to deliver images of almost heart-stopping beauty.”…

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Election Year 2020: Elizabeth Warren Is Ready to Do the Work

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Monday Morning Open Thread: Back to the Daily Leap of Faith

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And a little start-the-week-well self-indulgence, because she’s not just my favorite candidate…


Later, in Iowa:

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Friday Morning Open Thread: Day of the Girl (Year of the Felons)

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Elsewhere…

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Election 2020 Open Thread: Elizabeth Warren Celebrates *Every* Vote

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From Vanity Fair, “GOP Strategists Fear Trump’s “Pocahontas” Thing Isn’t Working”:

… Several strategists tell the Daily Beast that Trump was caught off guard by the resonance of Warren’s populist rhetoric—a skill set that in some ways mirrors his own, minus the mental effluvia and human rights violations—and said she might be “tougher” to compete against than he realized, repeatedly asking advisers whether they consider Warren to be a “fighter.” Others confessed that, despite their best efforts to comb her record for dirt and to workshop attacks, the GOP oppo machine has been struggling to land any blows. Sure, some of Warren’s proposals are pie-in-the-sky, and maybe the math is hazy, but have you listened to Donald Trump? One strategist suggested that conservative think tanks have been struggling to keep up with the sheer volume of white papers Warren has been generating.

It doesn’t help that anti-Warren stories haven’t gotten as much pickup in the media, mainstream or otherwise. “We all push out the bad Warren stories but they don’t go very far,” the source said—a point echoed by nearly a dozen others. “Sure the Republican base will ultimately loathe Warren, but she doesn’t inspire the same kind of historic vitriol that Hillary Clinton did,” one of the strategists told the Beast. “That, combined with fact that SCOTUS isn’t on the line as it was in ’16, and remembering that Trump needed the perfect inside straight to barely win last time, and any Democrat is going to be tough to beat, Warren included.”

Special note, for the Blogmaster:

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(Holiday) Monday Morning Open Thread

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Happy news: Someone who might or might not be Paul Broncks (note the twitter address) is back:

And a little practical inspiration, from the Washington Post — “For Baltimore teachers heading back to school, the Book Thing is a treasure”:

A 6,955-square-foot warehouse in Baltimore’s Abell neighborhood holds something of a treasure trove for the city’s teachers.

As they prepare for Tuesday’s first day of school, educators are making last-minute trips to the Book Thing, carefully sorting through the thousands of novels and textbooks and dictionaries they can use to build up their classroom libraries — all free.

For years, people have dropped off unwanted books at the Book Thing’s doors and then gone inside to browse through others’ donated stories. Anyone is welcome to take home as many books as they want from the used book “store.” Some tuck a novel or two into their totes and head out. Others fill cardboard boxes to the brim…

It’s a uniquely important resource for city teachers, whose struggle to pay for the books they needed to fill their classrooms inspired the Book Thing’s creation two decades ago.

Dan Parsons, an English teacher at Frederick Douglass High, walked out of the Book Thing on Saturday with a loaded box in his hands and even more books stuffed into his canvas backpack.

At his West Baltimore school — where many students come from poverty and witness the city’s unrelenting gun violence up close — Parsons transformed his classroom into a literary oasis. Hundreds of books cover nearly every surface. He uses stocked bookshelves to cordon off reading nooks where students can escape into the kinds of stories that both reflect their own experiences and open their minds to new ones…

Yeah, in a better world, we wouldn’t need volunteers to help out teachers who are digging into their own sparse funds to support their students. But there are kids who need those books now — they can’t wait for perfection.

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