Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Good luck with your asparagus.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

I personally stopped the public option…

Han shot first.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity.

Word salad with all caps

Mission Accomplished!

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

This blog will pay for itself.

The revolution will be supervised.

Shocking, but not surprising.

Just a few bad apples.

Nevertheless, she persisted

‘Forty-two’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

An army of rabid, anonymous commenters

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Militantly superior in their own minds…

Not all heroes wear capes.

This is how realignments happen…

Screw the Judean People’s Front. Splitters.

Naturally gregarious and alpha

We Survived Breitbartpocalypse!

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Grifters Gonna Grift

Late Night GOP Venality Open Thread: Colorado Congressman

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It’s always performative bullshit…

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Election Year Horrorshow Open Thread: These Are Not Serious People

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Potentially dangerous, yes — but not serious.

This was not a last-minute “response” rally; it was scheduled in advance of the Biden/Buttigieg/Klobuchar lovefest tonight:


I checked the ‘donate’ link; the funds go to Bernie, through Williamson’s account — I assume she takes a percentage, but I’m a cynic that way. But the rally is credited as “Featuring Spiritual Teacher and Author Marianne Williamson and Bernie’s Daughter Heather Titus, Director of Sedona Yoga Festival,” so I guess it’s a joint grift.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota:

Attract a clown, expect a circus…

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Repub Venality Open Thread: The Night Caligula’s Horse Delivered the State of the Union Speech

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Trump's State of Disunion - Jack Ohman

(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)

 
Of course it was a load of manure — that’s the best the beast is capable of producing. More shame on the gutless GOP sacks in suits who, to protect their own sinecures, not only voted the horse as their leader, but insisted it was the finest orator and firmest patriot since Tailgunner Joe McCarthy dined alone (with his DTs).

Commentary, at this point, would be superfluous… El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago delivered his State of the Union address, one of the few constitutional responsibilities of his office that he hasn’t ignored. Which is not to say he hasn’t degraded it, too. On Tuesday night, he turned it into a cheesy spectacle that belonged in, say, a casino sinking into bankruptcy in Atlantic City.

He bestowed the Presidential Medal Of Freedom on Rush Limbaugh, hanging it on that rancid bag of old sins, right there in the House chamber. He arranged a surprise family reunion for a soldier home from deployment, right there in the House chamber. He told an African-American schoolgirl that he, personally, was going to see to it that she can go to a good school. He congratulated another child on not having been aborted, and promised that he, personally, would see to it that nobody was. These Dear-Leader-Grants-a-Wish moments are straight out of a dog-eared playbook used by various members of the Kim family in North Korea. Weaponized sentimentality is a powerful tool in authoritarian hands.

The speech itself was the usual farrago of lies and bigotry…

This is a lying, criminal president*, aided and abetted by a political party that lost its mind long before it lost its way, and that now swallows poisonous pablumlike this:

If forcing American taxpayers to provide unlimited free health care to illegal aliens sounds fair to you, then stand with the radical left. But if you believe that we should defend American patients and American seniors, then stand with me and pass legislation to prohibit free government health care for illegal aliens.

It’s morning in American carnage.

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Open Thread: Late Night Notes on Lev Parnas

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Per an unreliable narrator:

But look how happy he was, at Mar-A-Lago!:

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Potential Book Club Material: “A Very Stable Genius”

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I’m kidding, of course — we know most of this crap already. But kudos to the authors on the timing of their release…

President Trump reveals himself as woefully uninformed about the basics of geography, incorrectly telling Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, “It’s not like you’ve got China on your border.” He toys with awarding himself the Medal of Freedom.

And, according to a new book by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig, Trump does not seem to grasp the fundamental history surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor…

“A Very Stable Genius” — a 417-page book named after Trump’s own declaration of his superior knowledge — is full of similarly vivid details from Trump’s tumultuous first three years as president, from his chaotic transition before taking office to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation and final report…

The book by the two longtime Post reporters — who were part of the team that won a 2018 Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on Trump and Russia — was obtained ahead of its scheduled release Tuesday.

Many of the key moments reported in the book are rife with foreign policy implications, portraying a novice commander in chief plowing through normal protocols and alarming many both inside the administration and in other governments.

Early in his administration, for instance, Trump is eager to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin — so much so, the authors write, “that during the transition he interrupts an interview with one of his secretary of state candidates” to inquire about his pressing desire: “When can I meet Putin? Can I meet with him before the inaugural ceremony?” he asks…

In spring 2017, Trump also clashed with Tillerson when he told him he wanted his help getting rid of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a 1977 law that prevents U.S. firms and individuals from bribing foreign officials for business deals.

“It’s just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas,” Trump says, according to the book. “We’re going to change that.”

The president, they go on to explain, was frustrated with the law “ostensibly because it restricted his industry buddies or his own company’s executives from paying off foreign governments in faraway lands.”

The book, the duo writes in an author’s note, is based on hundreds of hours of interviews with more than 200 sources, corroborated, when possible, by calendars, diary entries, internal memos and even private video recordings. (Trump himself had initially committed to an interview for the book, the authors write, but ultimately declined, amid an escalating war with the media).

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday…

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Grifters Gonna Grift Open Thread: Why Is the Sanders Campaign Suddenly In Need of A Big Distraction?

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Warren is an unelectable whore! Biden is an elderly racist! Buttigieg is a larval robot! Sure, it’s crunch time in Iowa, but I had been expecting this kind of noisy media-friendly shite-flinging from the Sanders campaign ever since a certain AP article appeared last week — “Shadow group provides Sanders super PAC support he scorns”:

Bernie Sanders says he doesn’t want a super PAC. Instead, he has Our Revolution, a nonprofit political organization he founded that functions much the same as one.

Like a super PAC, which is shorthand for super political action committee, Our Revolution can raise unlimited sums from wealthy patrons that dwarf the limits faced by candidates and conventional PACs. Unlike a super PAC, however, the group doesn’t have to disclose its donors — a stream of revenue commonly referred to as “dark money.”

Now, with less than one month to go before the Iowa caucuses, Our Revolution appears to be skirting campaign finance law, which forbids groups founded by federal candidates and officeholders from using large donations to finance federal election activity, including Sanders’ 2020 bid.…

…[W]hile Warren has come under fire for courting wealthy financiers in her past Senate campaigns, Sanders and Our Revolution have largely avoided scrutiny during the primary, even as he has accelerated his criticism of others, among them Biden, for relying on super PACs founded by their allies.

In the case of Our Revolution, which aims to boost voter turnout for Sanders, the Vermont senator was the founder…

The campaign finance act says groups “directly or indirectly established” by federal officeholders or candidates can’t “solicit, receive, direct, transfer, or spend funds” for federal electoral activity that exceeds the “limitations, prohibitions, and reporting requirements” of the law. Those limits are currently set at $2,800 for candidates and $5,000 for political action committees.

Our Revolution has taken in nearly $1 million from donors who gave more than the limits and whose identities it hasn’t fully disclosed, according to tax filings for 2016, 2017 and 2018. Much of it came from those who contributed six-figure sums.

It won’t have to publicly reveal its 2019 fundraising until after this year’s presidential election. And money it raises between now and then won’t have to be disclosed until the following year…

Read the whole thing. I’d been waiting to see how much this story would be amplified outside sources like the Daily Caller, or whether the Sanders campaign would mount a defense. But that defense, as ever with St. Bernie, turns out to be “I HAVE NO FLAWS, unlike every other Democratic candidate!”

So, no, I don’t expect to hear Word One about this during tomorrow’s debate — the other candidates can’t afford to waste resources fighting a million bad-faith assaults on their staff and volunteers from the Bernie mob, and the media has no interest in damping down such an ‘exciting’ candidate. They’re saving their ammo until, in Chris Cillizza’s dreams, it’s a two-army battle between the Oval Office Occupant and his mirror-world doppelganger. And as long as he can keep squirreling away money for his ongoing, never-ending national campaign (and his fourth house), Sanders is perfectly happy to take advantage.

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Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: Chris Cillizza Will NOT Be Out-Jingo’d

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UpChuck Todd spends ten minutes of high-dollar Sunday tv time trying to gotcha Warren, but Chris ‘The Mad Bitcher’ Cillizza goes straight for ‘SHE SAID LONG WORDS WHICH IS ELITIST & PROBABLY UNAMERICAN’…

Chris just wants there to be a nice noisy horse race until the election, when he dearly hopes we will elect whichever Repub daddy eventually gets shoved to the top of the ticket.

Let’s all keep in mind how good it will feel when The Mad Bitcher has a public breakdown as the Democrats celebrate our new president, come November!

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Election 2020 Open Thread: It’s Not A Campaign, It’s A Performance

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So Sanders’ most online supporters have successfully gamed the system — and the media — into another BIG WIN FOR BERNIE!!! media cycle, this time concerning his fundraising:

Hey, as long as it’s good for the credit-card companies, amirite? Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Meanwhile, out in the real(ish) world, where the actual work is done…

Part of the price of relying on volunteers and interns is that every campaign will be plagued with staffers who spend more time cultivating their personal issues than working on their candidate’s official program. But of course the Sanders campaign is the one whose staffers feel the need to contact the media about this eternal dynamic!

Also, it was reported as Excellent news for Bernie! when Jeff ‘Comic Book Guy’ Weaver lost his position as the official face of the Sanders campaign. Perhaps the political horse-race touts predicted this would give Weaver more opportunity to play to his real strength, nitpicking minor details and curating grudges…

Sen. Bernie Sanders frequently attacks Amazon on the campaign trail, vowing to break up the online retail giant if elected, denouncing its treatment of workers and decrying its ability to pay no federal taxes on billions in profits.

That’s why impassioned dissent erupted within the Sanders campaign earlier this year over its purchases of large amounts of supplies through Amazon, according to five people with knowledge of the situation…

The Sanders campaign continued using Amazon despite the concerns. Through September, it had spent more than $233,000 on Amazon purchases — much of it in office supplies, and often through Amazon’s Marketplace feature — a review of campaign finance records shows…

The campaign’s spending on Amazon is a small fraction of the more than $40 million it shelled out on operating expenditures during the same period. But it was more than other campaigns spent on the company, and more than enough to prompt surprise and complaints from staffers who felt it conflicted with the campaign’s principles…

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Saturday Night Horrorshow Open Thread: YOUUUKRANE!!!!

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Not much joy in sercon dissection of the latest foreign policy revelations at this hour on a holiday weekend, but: This man is still, theoretically, the Oval Office Occupant’s personal lawyer.

Earlier this month, Rudolph W. Giuliani made an unexpected trip to Ukraine, accompanied by a TV crew from One America News Network (OAN), a little-known American channel to the right of Fox News. Giuliani’s mission was to exonerate his client, President Trump, of the charge in the articles of impeachment that he tried to bribe Ukrainian officials into investigating Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election, and to dig up incriminating information on Biden and his son Hunter.

The documentary of that trip has now been released, and it tells a truly fantastic tale, as presented by OAN correspondent Chanel Rion. As she and Giuliani tried to uncover the truth, Rion claimed, 1,000 Ukrainian troops were deployed in Kyiv as part of an effort to find them. Once they were found, they raced to the airport, where Jewish Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk and Jewish businessman and philanthropist George Soros were waiting for them with “human Dobermans in little black Mercedes.”

For journalists like me who have lived and worked in Ukraine for years, these claims were comical. Kyiv’s main international airport is about as much of a hub for intrigue as La Guardia. There is no evidence of a mobilization of Ukrainian troops in Kyiv while Giuliani and Co. were there. Soros does not live in Ukraine and hasn’t visited since 2016, and no one else has reported Pinchuk lurking at the airport. (Rion later tried to hedge her claim about Pinchuk and Soros, if only halfheartedly.)…

On cable news shows and Twitter, Giuliani has been echoing the same outlandish claims made by the documentary. He stated that one former Ukrainian prosecutor they spoke to who had proof of a Biden conspiracy had been poisoned with mercury, died twice and been revived. With Trump putting on pressure, the Senate Judiciary Committee has agreed to hear Giuliani and his evidence. In short, Giuliani’s claims about information coming from Ukraine look like they are going to become ammunition for Trump’s eventual impeachment trial in the Senate…

Man who wrote the tweet at the top is a former president of Estonia, where they don’t have our (literally) insular privilege to treat all this as a wacky TV serial.

Also, Rudy has a new “communications director”:


Additional nightmare fuel, via Politico: The mystery of Rudy Giuliani’s spokeswoman. Over the river and off the map!

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Late Night Open Thread: A Truly *Professional* Grifter Takes No Holidays

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Give Ben Domenech due credit — he started grifting for the GOP while in high school, networked his way from the NRO online and RedState through the Heartland Institute into ‘publishing’ The Federalist (funder officially unidentified). And he’s married to John McCain’s daughter — since Meghan’s mommy is a billionaire beer heiress, neither she nor Ben would ever have to work for a living, if they didn’t take pride in their work ethic. (Or at least need a public outlet for their grievances & insecurities.)

Whining about the NYTimes’ 1619 Project has become the latest masturbatory group-grievance for the ‘intellectual’ branch of the Wingnut Wurlitzer, and by Prosperity Jesus, where there’s a grievance to be milked, Mr. Domenech is on it!

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Repub Stupidity Open Thread: Trump’s Press Campaign Proudly Declares Him A Comic-Book Villain

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… a comic-book villain who is mere seconds away from getting the beat-down of his life…

Nicely (in the original sense of the word) encapsulating the modern Republican Party: Parasitizing a smarter group’s work, failing to pay attention long enough to spot the problems with the stolen ideas, and not caring how much they get kicked around afterwards so long as the check clears. Per the Guardian:

… Shortly after the House brought two articles of impeachment against the president for his efforts seeking foreign interference to bolster his own political interests, the official Trump War Room re-election campaign Twitter account posted a video to social media that superimposed his face over that of the villainous Marvel comic book character Thanos.

In the scene from the movie Avengers: Endgame, Thanos snaps his fingers, attempting to destroy the diverse array of heroes from throughout the universe who’ve teamed up to defeat him. I am inevitable Trump/Thanos says…

The video then cuts to footage of Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and Jerry Nadler who magically vanish much like in the movie. Not the movie in question, mind you, the previous one, but these low-effort trolling operations from Trump’s social media team tend not to be heavy on consistency or logic.

Marvel Universe timeline discrepancies aside, the choice of this moment from the film was a strange one, as it’s seconds before Thanos realizes he’s about to be defeated.

Among the chorus of critics to point out the many other flaws at work in the analogy here was Jim Starlin, the artist who created the character of Thanos in the 1970s…

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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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Repub ‘Traditions’ Open Thread: Feelers… Nothing More Than Feelers…

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The people she knows best are Republicans. Even the ones who can read would rather not risk muddying their propaganda skillsets. Fox News and the Oval Office Occcupant’s twitter feed tell them all they need to know to succeed in grinding through their daily routines.

Every so often, the Republican Party reaches a new nadir, where they can’t even scrape up a conventionally good-looking figurehead to spin the propaganda on television. Now it’s Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who looks entirely too much like her old man (nepotism, of course, being her only qualification). Last time the GOP was about to get stomped, it was the Albino Amphibian who led the charge:

Gotta hand it to Newt: He’s an inspiration to every soulless grifter in American politics.

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The other obstruction and witness intimidation case tied to Russia and Ukraine

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Roger Stone was convicted on all counts of obstruction, false statements and witness intimidation.

Open Thread

UPDATE 1

At least this Friday has the courtesy of news-dumping during normal business hours.

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Repub Venality Open Thread: Oh, Joy, Another 80s Reboot We Didn’t Need

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Turns out those ‘Opportunity Zones’ aren’t just a financial lifeline for Jared Kushner’s family of grifters — it’s a smorgasbord for allll the financial predators among Donny Dollhands’ associates…

In the 1980s, Michael Milken embodied Wall Street greed. A swashbuckling financier, he was charged with playing a central role in a vast insider-trading scheme and was sent to prison for violating federal securities and tax laws. He was an inspiration for the Gordon Gekko character in the film “Wall Street.”

Mr. Milken has spent the intervening decades trying to rehabilitate his reputation through an influential nonprofit think tank, the Milken Institute, devoted to initiatives “that advance prosperity.”

These days, the Milken Institute is a leading proponent of a new federal tax break that was intended to coax wealthy investors to plow money into distressed communities known as “opportunity zones.” The institute’s leaders have helped push senior officials in the Trump administration to make the tax incentive more generous, even though it is under fire for being slanted toward the wealthy.

Mr. Milken, it turns out, is in a position to personally gain from some of the changes that his institute has urged the Trump administration to enact. In one case, the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, directly intervened in a way that benefited Mr. Milken, his longtime friend.

It is a vivid illustration of the power that Mr. Milken, who was barred from the securities industry and fined $600 million as part of his 1990 felony conviction, has amassed in President Trump’s Washington. In addition to the favorable tax-policy changes, some of Mr. Trump’s closest advisers — including Mr. Mnuchin, Jared Kushner and Rudolph W. Giuliani — have lobbied the president to pardon Mr. Milken for his crimes, or supported that effort, according to people familiar with the effort…

The former “junk bond king” has investments in at least two major real estate projects inside federally designated opportunity zones in Nevada, near Mr. Milken’s Lake Tahoe vacation home, according to public records reviewed by The New York Times.

One of those developments, inside an industrial park, is a nearly 700-acre site in which Mr. Milken is a major investor. Last year, after pressure from Mr. Milken’s business partner and other landowners, the Treasury Department ignored its own guidelines on how to select opportunity zones and made the area eligible for the tax break, according to people involved in the discussions and records reviewed by The Times.

The unusual decision was made at the personal instruction of Mr. Mnuchin, according to internal Treasury Department emails. It came shortly after he had spent time with Mr. Milken at an event his institute hosted…

Mr. Milken — operating from an X-shaped trading desk in Beverly Hills, Calif. — was a Wall Street legend. He pioneered the junk bond, which enabled financially risky companies to borrow billions of dollars and ignited a wave of often-hostile corporate takeovers that came to define a go-go era. His firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert, hosted an annual event, which came to be known as the Predators’ Ball, where the era’s greatest financiers mingled. Mr. Milken became a billionaire.

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