Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Fight them, without becoming them!

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

In after Baud. Damn.

Bark louder, little dog.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

The willow is too close to the house.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

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

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

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Things related to the 2012 Republican primary

Repub Venality Open Thread: Trump Wants His WAAAAAHll & He Wants It NAOOOOW

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They’re a bunch of damaged middle school boys drawing up plans for their Fortress of Evil. Disgusting as this is, take it as one more data point that Trump (or at least his smarter minions) doesn’t expect to be in the Oval Office after 2020. From the Washington Post, “‘Take the land’: President Trump wants a border wall. He wants it black. And he wants it by Election Day”:

President Trump is so eager to complete hundreds of miles of border fence ahead of the 2020 presidential election that he has directed aides to fast-track billions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules, according to current and former officials involved with the project…

Trump has repeatedly promised to complete 500 miles of fencing by the time voters go to the polls in November 2020, stirring chants of “Finish the Wall!” at his political rallies as he pushes for tighter border controls. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has completed just about 60 miles of “replacement” barrier during the first 2½ years of Trump’s presidency, all of it in areas that previously had border infrastructure.

The president has told senior aides that a failure to deliver on the signature promise of his 2016 campaign would be a letdown to his supporters and an embarrassing defeat. With the election 14 months away and hundreds of miles of fencing plans still in blueprint form, Trump has held regular White House meetings for progress updates and to hasten the pace, according to several people involved in the discussions…

Asked for comment, a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Trump is joking when he makes such statements about pardons…

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Repub Venality Open Thread: Trump Wants His WAAAAAHll & He Wants It NAOOOOWPost + Comments (50)

Tell me, over and over and over again, my friend

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There’s some other potential big news about the Russia probe that’s flow somewhat under the radar with all the other stuff that came out today: Rick Gates may be about to flip.

Some people say that talking about Trump firing Mueller is gloom pr0n. I don’t think it is, and I think we should be ready to act if and when it happens.

Get ready to protest. Looks like there should be marches all over the country.

Tell me, over and over and over again, my friendPost + Comments (130)

Go read a book you illiterate son of a bitch

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This article about Bannon’s pseudo-intellectual nonsense that everyone’s been talking about is epic! This isn’t even the highlight:

Bannon, described by one associate as “the most well-read person in Washington,” is known for recommending books to colleagues and friends, according to multiple people who have worked alongside him. He is a voracious reader who devours works of history and political theory “in like an hour,” said a former associate whom Bannon urged to read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. “He’s like the Rain Man of nationalism.”

THIS is the highlight. I knew Taleb could bring the word soup but this is next level:

“They look like the incarnation of ‘antifragile’ people,” Taleb said of the new administration. “The definition of ‘antifragile’ is having more upside than downside. For example, Obama had little upside because everyone thought he was brilliant and would solve the world’s problems, so when he didn’t it was disappointing. Trump has little downside because he’s already been so heavily criticized. He’s heavily vaccinated because of his checkered history. People have to understand: Trump did not run to be archbishop of Canterbury.”

And this this idiot who pals around with Peter Thiel is a deep thinker too:

Moldbug’s dense, discursive musings on history—“What’s so bad about the Nazis?” he asks in one 2008 post that condemns the Holocaust but questions the moral superiority of the Allies—include a belief in the utility of spreading misinformation that now looks like a template for Trump’s approach to truth. “To believe in nonsense is an unforgeable [sic] demonstration of loyalty. It serves as a political uniform. And if you have a uniform, you have an army,” he writes in a May 2008 post.

In one January 2008 post, titled “How I stopped believing in democracy,” he decries the “Georgetownist worldview” of elites like the late diplomat George Kennan. Moldbug’s writings, coming amid the failure of the U.S. state-building project in Iraq, are hard to parse clearly and are open to multiple interpretations, but the author seems aware that his views are provocative.

There was too much nonsense for me absorb the first time through so I’m going to be rereading it.

Go read a book you illiterate son of a bitchPost + Comments (209)

But her emails….

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Complain all you want about Hillary’s campaign but if not for the private email bullshit that the Times and others got a strange hard-on for she’d be president right now. Well…..

Presidential son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has corresponded with other administration officials about White House matters through a private email account set up during the transition last December, part of a larger pattern of Trump administration aides using personal email accounts for government business.

But her emails….Post + Comments (214)

This shit is bananas

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If this gets through the Senate (I don’t think it will, but I think it will pass the House), we are officially a banana republic:

A Republican lawmaker has put forth an amendment that would stop funding for the special counsel’s Russia investigation 180 days after it becomes law.

The amendment from Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) would also prevent special counsel Robert Mueller from probing “matters occurring before June 2015,” which is the month Trump announced his presidential bid.

This shit is bananasPost + Comments (71)

Mmm sophisticated mama

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You probably heard about this:

Early Saturday morning, President Trump tweeted his gratitude to a social-media super-fan, ­Nicole Mincey, magnifying her praise of him to his 35 million followers.

Here’s the problem: There is no evidence the Twitter feed belongs to someone named Nicole Mincey. And the account, according to experts, bears a lot of signs of a Russia-backed disinformation campaign.

On Sunday, Twitter suspended the Mincey account, known as @ProTrump45, after several other users revealed that it was probably a fake, created to amplify pro-Trump content.

The Post article I linked to goes on to say:

Even as the president has railed against multiple investigations into Russia’s meddling in U.S. politics, he may have become Exhibit A of the foreign government’s influence by elevating a suspected Russia-connected ­social-media user — part (of) a sophisticated campaign to exacerbate disputes in U.S. politics and gain the attention of the most powerful tweeter in the world.

I have one problem here: is it really all that sophisticated?

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s fascinating and a bit scary that Russian propaganda and right-wing media have merged into one (check out this site that tracks Russian twitter bots and how often they link to Breitbart and Gateway Pundit). But what they’re doing is quite simple. You create an account called DeplorableCindy or whatever and make your avatar a stock photo of a Hooter’s model. Then you rewteet whatever nonsense Sean Hannity or Jim Hoft is babbling about that hour. Sometimes you do something a little fancier than that (as with the Nicole Mincey fabrication described above). But it’s not string theory.

I doubt it has that much influence. The fact that it fooled Dolt45 doesn’t prove anything.

Mmm sophisticated mamaPost + Comments (34)