Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

We will not go back.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

The willow is too close to the house.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

We still have time to mess this up!

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

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

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Not all heroes wear capes.

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Wednesday Evening Open Thread: … ‘Comedy’ Tonight!

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Last Big! Serious! Head-to-Head! GOP debate before next week’s starter gun at the Iowa caucus, and all journos want to talk about is Chris Christie officially dropping his campaign. (And, apparently, getting ‘caught on a hot mic‘ slagging Haley on his way out.)

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Sunday Evening Open Thread: Matt Gaetz Gets Some of the Attention He Craves

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This isn’t chess — it’s barely a step up from tic-tac-toe. Which makes it catnip for Politico:

… Let’s assume Gaetz starts with only a handful of Republicans — perhaps just five, maybe as many as 10 — and that McCarthy has no chance of turning this group around. It’s not much, and that means Gaetz needs Democrats — perhaps as many as 200 — to oust McCarthy. (Ironic considering that his line today was that McCarthy is the Dems’ speaker.)…

One senior Democratic lawmaker told us this morning that the instructions from leadership to “all Dems” right now is “keeping powder dry.”

While Gaetz might be right that he can get lots of votes from progressives, his only chance after that is if Jeffries himself locks down the caucus in favor of the MTV. But that could take some persuading. For a bloc of moderates — a mix of perhaps 25 to 40 Blue Dogs, Problem Solvers and Dems in Trump districts — a vote to prove their bipartisan credentials by keeping McCarthy as speaker could be very tempting…

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GOP Death Cult Open Thread: Excellent Advice, Which Will No Doubt Be Ignored

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Yes, I clicked so you don’t have to…

Pedro Gonzalez, the magazine editor and online influencer who has amassed a following on the far right over the past several years, made more extensive anti-Semitic remarks than previously reported.

The politics editor of the paleoconservative Chronicles magazine who gained prominence through appearances on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program, Gonzalez argued in online messages obtained by the Washington Free Beacon that former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) “can’t be criticized” publicly because she is a Jew—Pelosi is a Roman Catholic—and that Jewish scholar Yoram Hazony is an unfit spokesman for American nationalism because he was born in Israel.

Gonzalez told the Free Beacon on Sunday that he now believes the comments “were wrong” and “don’t reflect who I am.”…

… Gonzalez, who has made a name for himself as a vocal supporter of Florida governor and 2024 Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis, wrote that “not every Jew is problematic, but the sad fact is that most are,” and that the “only tactical considertation [sic] of Jews is screening them for movements.”…

This seems to be surfacing now as part of an internecine war between Trump defenders at Breitbart and the Free Beacon, versus DeSantis ‘upstarts’ at the Chronicle and elsewhere. Ya gotta hand it to Ron DeSaster: His campaign is unintentionally unmasking a lot of squirmy ‘conservative’ bigotry among the fine upstanding members of the GOP.

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GOP Grifters After Dark Open Thread: The Lyin’ in Winter

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It was whispered, IIRC, that the Federalist hired Molly Hemingway for her last name, and yet was eventually forced to ‘upgrade’ her to editor. It’s not so much that she’s a bad writer (though she is), but she’s too obviously angry, sadly incapable of layering the required sombre veneer of just-the-facts plausibility over this week’s assault on democracy and/or reality.

If that’s true, maybe the professional GOP Death Cultists don’t really want TFG running for president again. They want him to remain the God-Emperor of Marred-At-Largo, a celebrity figurehead to keep the rubes agape while sharper intellects set up the next judicial insurrection, a daily bloviating puppetshow that aw shucks, we’re all just simple populists here…

“I don’t like her … and I don’t like me.”

Former President Donald Trump was looking at a photo of the two of us that his assistant had just taken on my phone. It wasn’t up to his specifications…

A few weeks after Biden was inaugurated, I told Trump during a phone call that I was going to write a book about the 2020 election. He invited me to come see him.

That’s how I ended up in Florida in late February, for our first interview. The moment you land at the Palm Beach International airport, people joke about having made it to the Free State of Florida, but that’s exactly how it feels compared to D.C.

My friend Karol Markowicz, a writer who escaped Brooklyn for an area near Palm Beach just so her children could attend school during the lockdowns, describes the area as “The Hamptons, but colorful and risk-taking. Everyone is rich enough that they don’t care what anyone else thinks of them.”

Palm Beach in the winter is just perfect. The town is full of beautiful men and women who seem to have the right balance of work and leisure. With the blissfully temperate climate and the gorgeous — and yes, colorful — homes and lawns, I began to fantasize about what life-changing events would have to occur for me to be able to make the move also…
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By our May interview, Trump was still disappointed in McConnell, who he called “a disgrace to the Republican Party. He’s gutless. He should have fought for us on the rigged election. Can you imagine Schumer saying ‘We have to declare Trump the winner to get the country going’?”

“The problem with the Republicans is they don’t know who to fight,” Trump said.

I asked him who he thought might make a better leader for Republicans. He discussed a few names off the record, and said, “Leadership is a very funny thing. Oftentimes you don’t know who’s going to be a good leader until they’re there. It’s like you throw the baby into the water and they turn out to be an Olympic champion, or maybe it won’t work out so well. I’ve watched people that have such capability, and they turn out to be lousy leaders. You never know.”…

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Sunday Pharisees Open Thread: The New Failson Falkirk Center

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Jerry Jr. (last seen defending himself against charges of real estate fraud, self-dealing, misappropriation of funds from the university he inherited, and nightclubbing in Miami Beach) has gotten together with Charlie Kirk (founder of TP-USA, last seen bulk-buying failson Trump Jr’s ‘best seller’) have a new grift, per the Washington Examiner:

Growing concerns in conservative circles that liberals are trying to convert young Christians into socialists by distorting the Bible and U.S. Constitution have prompted Virginia’s Liberty University to form a new center to push back on the media, academics, and Democratic politicians.

The new think tank, announced Saturday in Lynchburg and previewed to Secrets, was co-founded by two key leaders in the Christian youth movement, Liberty President Jerry Falwell Jr. and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

The Falkirk Center for Faith and Liberty, a combination of their names, will “play offense” against efforts by liberals to water down Judeo-Christian values in the Bible and Constitution in their bid to build support for big government, said Kirk.

“The fastest-growing religion in America is atheism and secularism and with that is the rise of leftism and statism and, as people veer away from the church and veer away from the Judeo Christian values that built our country, people are more likely to embrace statism,” he said in an interview…

It will operate under a 501(c)(3) charter and is owned by Liberty.

The plan to go on offense is similar to how President Trump operates, and it’s no coincidence that both Falwell and Kirk are leading defenders of the president.

Kirk, who stressed that it was an “honor” to work with Falwell in the bid to “organize an army of believers in faith and liberty,” said he expects to be attacked as he and Liberty’s president have for their support for Trump…

“If you want to be loved today as a political conservative, go against the president. You’ll get the best press you could ever possibly imagine. But if you want to stand for what’s right, if you want to stand for truth, defend our country, then you have to stand behind this president,” said Kirk, who has been accompanying Donald Trump Jr. during his book tour to colleges and universities to promote Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us.

All the failsons gotta hang together, it’s both natural affinity and a defense against their (many, legitimate) enemies.

That Jesus dude notoriously condemned religious profiteering, promoted multiculturalism and sharing material goods across the community, and gave away free food and healthcare. (Also, He preferred hanging with his group of fellow believers to getting an honest job, and when one of the overworked women of the movement asked for a little help in the kitchen, slanged her off for not properly valuing the worth of intellectual labor.) So: Signs point to YES!

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Sunday Show Review

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I’m driving cross country, and Sirius XM plays the audio from CNN, MSNBC and Fox, so I was able to listen to the Sunday shows. I haven’t watched them for years: as I assume most of you agree, they’re pretty damn stupid as well as wired for Republicans. Today, though, with the Trump White House and the GOP Congressional Leadership ducking the shows, it didn’t sound good for Trump. The only Republican stupid enough to go on Meet the Press, RonJon, spun up his deep state theories to a pretty unsympathetic audience in Chuck Todd. I didn’t catch the whole RonJon interview but the clips I heard were brutal, with Johnson sounding like a crank, and Todd jumping down his throat.

CNN overall, and Jake Tapper in particular, are pretty much in open revolt from the hegemony of bothsides. Tapper ended his show with a discussion of how Republicans turned on McCarthy, and used the examples of Margaret Chase Smith, who was out early against McCarthy, and Republican Majority Leader Bob Taft, who kept his mouth shut because he felt McCarthy was good for his Presidential ambitions. Jake noted that Smith’s obit led with her anti-McCarthy position, and Taft dropped dead before he could clean up his reputation. It was pretty fucking brutal and might possibly have convinced a Republican or two if any of them really did care about their reputations.

Still a lot of stupid questions, especially the “gotcha” one asking Senators whether they would vote for conviction knowing what they know today. Warren’s answer – the only smart one to that dumb question as far as I’m concerned – was a simple “Yes”. Booker and Klobuchar hemmed, hawed and hedged, ultimately wanting to say “yes” but not wanting to sound like they’re pre-judging Trump. Look, the guy has been trumpeting his guilt all over town – holding back when he’s letting fly looks weak.

I also listened to some of Chris Wallace, who’s the perfect example of how desperate people are for a Fox Newser to be somewhat reasonable that they latch on to the tiniest bit of journalistic practice like he’s the next Murrow. Wallace spent a bunch of time on the Schiff nonsense, but I admit I didn’t listen to the whole thing to avoid a traffic accident.

Overall, I guess I’m surprised that the overall tone and tenor of the shows was very negative for Trump, that (by their standards) they focused on the main issues of his criminality without getting sidetracked too far, and that there were very few hacks who would step up to defend Trump.

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The Dim Possibility of Showing Some Restraint

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Man, I hate to give Brooks any attention, but this is about perfect:


In case you haven’t been following along, Brooks did what he usually does when everything is bleak, it’s the middle of the night, he’s all alone and the dummies might be right: he masturbates onto the page, rolls over and goes to bed.

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