Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

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

This blog will pay for itself.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Come on, man.

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

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Today’s Media Chew Toy Open Thread: Olivia Nuzzi Just Wanted To Be in The Room Where It Happened

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what the actual fuck

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— Jerad Walker (@jeradwalker.bsky.social) November 14, 2025 at 12:20 PM

The glamor shots are sending me

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— Jerad Walker (@jeradwalker.bsky.social) November 14, 2025 at 12:22 PM

When a woman with Daddy Issues meets (yet another) man with Daddy Issues, and is eventually profiled by a NYT ‘reporter’ with his own Daddy Issues… Gift link, because this is a full-service blog:

… But she said “I love you” only after he said it first. He called her “Livvy” and wrote her poems. He said he wanted her to have his baby. He promised to take a bullet for her.

This is what Nuzzi writes in her book, “American Canto,” never naming the politician who readers will deduce is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

At the height of the 2024 presidential campaign, Nuzzi seemed to have a digital affair with Kennedy that revolved around texts and phone calls. The revelation derailed her career, led to her firing at New York magazine, and precipitated a very public explosion of her relationship with another prominent political journalist. Kennedy tried to brush her off, saying he had met her just once for the “hit piece” she wrote and threw his support behind Donald J. Trump, eventually becoming a cabinet secretary in his administration.

Nuzzi disappeared for a year, in self-imposed exile in Los Angeles where she wrote “American Canto” in secret. The book, which comes out Dec. 2 and is described here for the first time, paints a picture of a nation and a personal life on fire. She describes the mutual infatuation that consumed her, even if it was never consummated. (She is ambiguous in the book, but said in one of many interviews, “We were not sleeping together.”) But “American Canto” is far more about bearing witness to Trumpworld and about how she believes that warped her, just as it warped the country.

You could argue that referring to Kennedy and other players in the book by monikers like “the politician” is literary. It also allows her to construct a world where everyone is a sketch and proof is beside the point. Nuzzi makes clear in the book that she realizes there are people who will disagree with her version of events. She does not try to prove them. When I asked, for example, whether the text messages with Kennedy still exist, she said, “I don’t have anything to say about that.”

Kennedy did not respond to requests for comment.

Sitting under a pine tree in Los Angeles one night last month, Nuzzi gave up the pretense of trying to explain the unexplainable and reached for a joke for the people who simply could not fathom what came over her.

“Maybe it was the vaccines.”…

Requisite disclosure: I’ve always had a soft spot for Nuzzi, because she has done some excellent work exposing the weaknesses of some far-less-than-excellent, powerful men: Anthony Weiner. Rudy Giuliani. Ryan Lizza. Donald Trump. And, yes: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. I wrote this in December 2022:

Since she first broke on the national scene with the news of Anthony Weiner’s dick pics, Olivia Nuzzi has cultivated a proud reputation as a journalistic assassin. Whether descriptions of Rudy Giuliani fumbling unsuccessfully with multiple cell phones in a NYC cab, or anecdotes of Mehmet Oz’s vast disdain for Pennsylvania voters, her editors can count on Nuzzi for the reputational kill shots.

She has now been assigned a NYMag cover story about a shrunken old Repub capo, skulking in his tasteless golf club, surrounded by D-list grifters jostling to steal whatever unconsidered trinkets they can pry loose. “Inside Donald Trump’s sad, lonely, thirsty, broken, basically pretend run for reelection. (Which isn’t to say he can’t win.)”…

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Big Goings On at WVU

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So today was a big day today, as something pretty rare occurred. A university wide faculty assembly was held to discuss a vote of no confidence in Gordon Gee, the President, and to call for the immediate cessation of the “Academic Transformation.” President Gee, to the surprise of many, was in attendance and gave a give minute presentation, and the room was silent as all get out. When he ran out of time he muttered something about free speech and then continued on until various faculty shouted “POINT OF ORDER” and he was gaveled down.

Several faculty spoke, some in direct response to things just stated by Gee. A vote was then held, and the faculty voted 797-100 to signal NO CONFIDENCE in Gee.

The assembly then took up the second resolution to vote to stop the transformation. Provost Maryanne Reed, former professor, former Dean of Journalism, and self-described leaser of the academic transformation initiative, requested to speak for five minutes. This was put to a vote.

Faculty then spent a half hour voting, the vote failed 400 hundred something against and several hundred four, and decided not to listen to her for five minutes. Instead, several faculty used the allotted 90 seconds they were given to say why the resolution should be passed.

Faculty then voted, and the resolution passed 747-79.

To fully appreciate and understand how lopsided these margins are, you need to appreciate how argumentative faculty are- you could put twenty of them in a room for hours to pass a resolution for free ice cream and infinite puppy kisses and not only would they not be able to come up with a conclusion, the resolution wouldn’t be written until someone wrote it themselves and at the next meeting said here I wrote the resolution taking into account everyone’s advice, and it would get unanimously approved because there was something new to argue about this meeting.

Not only that, someone would say something that would be the foundation of a decade long grudge that will at some point over the next 20 years impact a doctoral thesis, and the hatchet would not be buried fully until one faculty member had been dead for ten years and the other a professor emeritus in waning health.

At any rate, immediately after the vote, the Board of Governors released a statement that had been written before the vote even happened expressing full support in President Gee and telling the faculty to go fuck themselves.

Not wanting to be left out, Governor Jim Justice, himself an unwitting display of the health of education in West Virginia, also had what we will charitably call thoughts:

Big Goings On at WVU

Bless his heart.

***

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MLK: from Dreaming to Reality

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Among the most painful bits of Dr. King’s legacy is how so much of it’s reduced to “I Have a Dream.” It’s true that it’s a landmark speech, powerful and moving…

…and always heard out of context of the other, more direct speeches that graced the March on Washington (a March organized by an openly Gay Man, no less – go look up the badass Bayard Rustin, please and thank you!). As if  the marchers just wanted to spend all day on their feet, listening to platitudes and winsome ideas!

I’m not going to dive into that context, I assume your Google button ain’t broke. :) What I will do, is talk about a couple of other works by Dr. King, works that ground him in the realities he fought to overcome, and that echo into these times.

The text for the afternoon will be taken from two works from near Dr. King’s passing:

  • “The Drum Major Instinct,” (hereafter DRUM), which you can listen to here, and read here, and
  • “A New Sense of Direction,” (hereafter SENSE), which you can read here.

I post all this to encourage you to read/listen to the above in full. To underline that Dr. King was far richer a thinker and even rabble-rouser than gets noticed — that the Hoover FBI feared him for damned good reasons. If you chose to read the above docs, and skip the rest of this? HELL YA!

But for those who want more? Follow…

See, Dr. King did not buy into a color-blind society. That wasn’t the context he gave his “Dream” speech under. The context, the fuller context of his work and life’s mission, is made plain by this remarkable passage in DRUM:

 

[…]when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, “Now, you know what? You ought to be marching with us. [laughter] You’re just as poor as Negroes.”

And I said, “You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. (Yes) And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white.

And you’re so poor you can’t send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march.”

Now that’s a fact. That the poor white has been put into this position, where through blindness and prejudice, (Make it plain) he is forced to support his oppressors. And the only thing he has going for him is the false feeling that he’s superior because his skin is white—and can’t hardly eat and make his ends meet week in and week out.

And there’s so much more.

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Round and Round the Wurlitzer Goes, Where It Stops Nobody Knows

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So I have read the postmortems on yesterday’s election, and reliably and predictably, they are as bad as you would expect. Biden is in trouble, Democrats didn’t listen, Democrats are out of touch. And I have to say, I don’t know what to do about it. It’s the same shit every election and I simply do not know how to counter a media amplified right wing puke funnel. I just don’t.

We like to tell ourselves that arc of history bends towards justice, at my age all I can say I have witnessed is the arc of history bending towards the same old fuckery but with new branding. It feels like the general public is willingly choosing to get dumber, more evil, and more openly racist, and LOVING EVERY FUCKING MINUTE OF IT. And I have no idea what to do about it. At all. This is how this election unfolded:

Scene: An openly hostile and coordinated crowd of agitators confronts school boards, leveling demands.

Mob: We are sick of you saying white people are bad and teaching Crucial Raisin Theory!!!

Board Members and Teachers: What?

Mob: We meant critical race theory!

Teacher: I don’t know what that is.

Mob: YES YOU DO AND STOP TEACHING IT WE WILL NOT BE IGNORED!

Teacher: I just teach basic history.

Mob: DO YOU TALK ABOUT THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH AND THE CIVIL WAR AND SAY SLAVERY AND THE HOLOCAUST WERE BAD?

Teacher: Well, yes.

Mob: SEE! CRUCIAL RAISIN THEORY.

***

Scene: The Local Nightly News

Bobblehead: In several counties across the state, concerned parents have gathered to peacefully address school boards and to discuss issues with the curriculum. Let’s go to Brandy, who dropped out of engineering, pre-med, english, and all her other classes to pursue a degree in journalism and has no training or specialty in anything, who is on the scene.

Brandy: Yes, thank you Bobblehead, I am here with Jimbob Angersmith, who works down at the Save-Alot and has dabbled in Republican politics via multiple engaged facebook groups, a school board member, and a teacher to share their thoughts:

JimBob: BRANDY WE KNOW WHERE THESE PEOPLE LIVE AND WE WILL NOT STOP UNTIL THEY STOP TEACHING CRITICAL RACE THEORY AND BRAINWASHING OUR KIDS THAT BEING WHITE IS BAD.

Board Member: We don’t teach critical race theory. I had to google it before the meeting.

JimBob: YES YOU DO AND WE WILL HUNT YOU DOWN.

Brandy: JimBob, what exactly is critical race theory?

JimBob: OH YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS AND THEY BETTER STOP TEACHING IT HERE LOOK AT THIS (shows clip of Tucker Carlson on his phone)

Brandy: What do you think Mr. School Board Member

Board Member: We don’t teach critical race theory we don’t even have the money to teach a lot of the stuff we should we’re short staffed and underpaid and our buildings are crumbling.

Brandy: And how about you, Mrs. Teacher:

Teacher: They tried to tear my mask off in the parking lot. Why do they all have guns? I’m afraid to go to the store.

Brandy: That’s the scene down here, Bobblehead, back to you.

Bobblehead: Great report Brandy, keep up the excellent work. Now to our panel of three guests from CPAC to explain why this is bad news for Democrats.

Every. Fucking. Election. The Republican ability to not only whip up some specious bullshit, but to get their entire party lockstep behind it and to then get the media to embrace it is simultaneously astounding and maddening, and again, I don’t know how to deal with it.

And now all the postmortems are as predictable as we all knew they would be:

Depending on what you read, we lost Virginia because Democrats are arrogant and out of touch, Biden is unpopular, this is Bernie and AOC’s fault for wanting too much in BBB, this is Manchinema’s fault for not letting the bills pass, and so on. Take your pick.

Again, I have no solutions or suggestions, because I simply do not know what to do. Just that I am frustrated and really over this happening every fucking election.

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Back to the Grind

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Rich autocrats bought out the Republican party (years ago) because its utility was obvious to them: For surprising nominal sums, they could increase their own agency and decrease their tax burden. We Democrats don’t have that kind of transparent pay-for-play benefit to offer — and if we somehow found one, we’d probably no longer be Democrats. All we have is hard work, and the knowledge that we’re on the right side of history!

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Glory Days

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Apparently, and regrettably, David Lee Roth has started a residency at Las Vegas, and for some absurd amount of money, you too can witness the spectacle of an elderly man in ill fitting clothes and obvious frontal lobe damage stiffly strutting around stage. I suppose that yes, it is still David Lee Roth, but it’s not the David Lee Roth you remember or want to remember. It’s an obscene caricature of David Lee Roth- long in the tooth, without voice or authority, cheapened by wear and tear and misuse, and ready to collapse at any moment. It’s enough to make you wonder if it was always this bad as you unfortunately glimpse his sagging ass betrayed by skin tight attire that should, at the very least, provide the bare minimum of architectural support.

It does not.

***

That’s basically how I feel about the state of our democracy heading into the impeachment. I spent a little bit of time watching the news shows this weekend- only a little, as I, too, am aging, and life is too short for this shit. I watched people on my tv put on their serious voices as they explain what a big and momentous deal this is- “JUST THE THIRD TIME IN HISTORY,” you know! The gravity of the situation never takes hold, though, because I remember the same serious voices talking about Hillary’s emails, or how Obama really screwed up by saying it was wrong for Henry Louis Gates to get fucked with by cops on his own god damned couch, or how the tea party really cared about the deficit or Iraq really did have WMD. It’s all a fucking show that no one wants to go to, we all know the ending, and we’re not going to get our money’s worth.

Donald Trump has been impeached. He did everything and more for which he was impeached. Everyone knows he is guilty, even his most ardent supporters in the jury pool, there will be a show trial, and he will be acquitted. And then Republicans will get back to the very serious business of rigging elections, pitting Americans against each other, wiping up what remains of our institutions and packing the courts, and the always popular looting of the treasury.

This is not to say Democrats will not try. I am sure they will. They will fight, they will make a clear case, they will plead for sanity from clearly insane and evil people like Susan Collins, and then they will lose. We can applaud them for their attempt to do the right thing, but it is important to remember the one thing that no one seems to care about when shouting “Remember the Alamo!” The good guys lost and all got killed.

***

When it is all over with, the serious voices on your tv will tell you what to think, and we’ll head into another election where we can focus on important issues like “Does Elizabeth Warren have native American blood” and “what they are really saying over corned beef hash in a former Kentucky mining town.” We’ll soon get distracted by something shiny, and meanwhile our hobbled democracy will pick up the microphone and start half singing:

“Oh, baby baby
Won’t-cha turn your head my way?”

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Friday Morning Open Thread: Is There Such A Thing As A ‘BS Storm Emergency Day’?

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Snow Storm Emergency Kit - Stone Soup

(Stone Soup via GoComics.com)

 
We’re only three days into the new year. There’s people still on their year-end break, for Murphy’s sake!

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