Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There will be lawyers.

I did not have this on my fuck 2020 bingo card.

I’m going back to the respite thread.

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Everybody saw this coming.

Shelter in place is one thing. shelter in pants is quite another.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Deploy the moving finger of emphasisity!

Peak wingnut was a lie.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Four legs? good! two legs? we’re not so sure…

How do you get liars to care about the truth?

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

We need fewer warriors in public service and more gardeners.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn – Nancy Pelosi

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Call the National Guard if your insurrection lasts more than four hours.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Verified, but limited!

I personally stopped the public option…

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Excellent Links

Late Night Repub Venality Open Thread: Florida Men

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Matt Gaetz would say that he owes his current position in national politics to his relentless Trump-humping championing of extremely conservative, media-friendly ‘ideas’. But he got his start drawing on his father’s fortune, garnered from iffy ‘healthcare’ businesses and shady real-estate deals. Of course, Florida has been a mecca for real-estate grifters since the 1820s (assuming you don’t count Ponce de Leon), but the interbreeding of “development” grifters with the local beady-eyed Confederate revanchists and the money-laundering migrants from Latin & Central America’s various kakistocracies has produced a flourishing culture of intricate dishonesty upon which less gifted exemplars of civic corruption can only gape with awe. Now that Carl Hiaasen has retired from his regular journalism gig, perhaps he can write the definite guide to Matt Gaetz’s Big Wet Scandal…

So far, Gaetz has decided to let Twitter and Tucker Carlson know that he was *not* a ‘sex trafficker’, and neither was his good buddy Tucker a rapist, winkwinknudgenege (for once, Carlson’s befuddled head-tilt, mouth-ajar expression did not seem out of place), because it was all down to the filthy old FBI trying to ‘entrap’ his old man. Even Chris Cillizza had trouble swallowing that one. The Washington Post has a possible source for that deeply muddled claim, involving free-lancing former agents looking to fund the search for a (probably dead) ex-FBI captive of the Iranian government:

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Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread: Last of the Watergate Gang?

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And the world is a slightly better, more honest place tonight. Liddy was an inspiration to every cheapjack would-be tough-guy rightwing politicial grifter of the last several decades, from Oliver North to the latest anti-vaxxer gymrat with a podcast and a grievance. He never repented, he never got smarter — as far as I can tell, he gloried in being a paranoid little ratfvcker who never did a decent thing in his long life. From the Washington Post:

… With his intense stare, cannonball head, bristling mustache and machine-gun style of speaking, Mr. Liddy looked like the archetypal bad guys he later depicted in television shows including “Miami Vice.” His friend and fellow Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt described him as “a wired, wisecracking extrovert who seemed as if he might be a candidate for decaffeinated coffee.”…

He also developed an early fascination with Nazi Germany, saying that he felt an “electric current” surge through his body when he listened to Adolf Hitler on the radio. To the young Liddy, Hitler embodied the “power of will.”

Although Mr. Liddy frequently boasted of his impeccable tradecraft, he made elementary mistakes that allowed his former FBI colleagues to connect the break-in to the White House and ultimately to a small circle of Nixon aides…

The director of the nonprofit National Security Archive, Tom Blanton, said Mr. Liddy “brought out the worst” in Nixon and his aides, “raising the testosterone level in the White House and ratcheting them up to even more extreme action.”…

By his own account, the Liddy of the Watergate break-in was a product of the culture wars of the 1960s. “The nation was at war not only externally in Vietnam but internally,” he said in his 1980 autobiography “Will,” which sold more than 1 million copies. “I had learned long ago the maxims of Cicero that ‘laws are inoperative in war’ and that ‘the good of the people is the chief law.’ ”…

After his release from prison, Mr. Liddy finally broke his silence about his role in Watergate with the publication of “Will,” which was well-received by many of his former antagonists. Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward described the book as the “self-portrait of a zealot,” but he also noted that it contained “an embarrassment of riches” growing out of “his blustery conceit and his freedom from any guilt about what he did. . . . His story rings true,” Woodward wrote in his review…

The best thing one might say about Liddy is that he didn’t whine and try to shift blame for his crimes, like so many of today’s right-wing zealots. And even then, he was accused of taking way more credit than he earned for those crimes.

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Open Thread: Black Farmers Are Owed A Break

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Elections have long-overdue consequences, sometimes, and this snippet of the American Rescue Act is a good start. Tom Vilsack, like his new boss, seems to have learned from his previous mistakes:

… In an interview with The Washington Post, Vilsack for the first time noted the extent to which the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated existing disparities across the American economy.

The distribution of coronavirus relief increased those gaps, he said.

Of those who identified their race or ethnicity, Black farmers received only $20.8 million of nearly $26 billion in two rounds of payments under the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program announced by the Trump administration last April, he said.

“We saw 99 percent of the money going to White farmers and 1 percent going to socially disadvantaged farmers and if you break that down to how much went to Black farmers, it’s 0.1 percent,” he said. “Look at it another way: The top 10 percent of farmers in the country received 60 percent of the value of the covid payments. And the bottom 10 percent received 0.26 percent.”

Of the 3.4 million farmers in the United States today, only 45,000 — 1.3 percent — are Black, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s down from 1 million a century ago, because of widespread land loss.

Vilsack said the Biden administration would be focused on closing those inequalities. The USDA will battle three systemic problems concurrently, he said: a broken farm system, food insecurity and a health-care crisis…

After months of national debate about systemic racism and reparations for slavery and segregation, Vilsack says he will make rooting out racism at the agency, and in agriculture, a priority. The American Rescue Plan will pay $5 billion to farmers of color, who have lost 90 percent of their land over the past century because of systemic discrimination and a cycle of debt…

Of course, one reason for Sec. Vilsack’s interview is that the Disloyal Opposition has already been busy trying to gin up resentment:

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Excellent Read: ‘Kamala Harris’s Self-evident Truth’

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The always insightful Robin Givhan, at the Washington Post:

… Harris was traveling with the president last week for what had been billed as a victory lap to mark the passage of the American Rescue Plan and to thank Georgia and its two Democratic senators, who had played such a determinative role in getting it passed. Harris and President Biden were also there to highlight the glories of science during a stop at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They did all of those things, but at the heart of their day trip was their intention to speak to the killings, just days before, of eight people — six of whom were Asian women.

Harris’s words were blunt and unembellished, as they so often were when she was a senator interrogating a witness. She didn’t mention thoughts and prayers, because as much as the vice president might sit and ponder the pain of those who lost loved ones and aim to lift these survivors up to God, the government is not church, and it will not be there to hold anyone’s hand in the lonely quiet of extended mourning. Thoughts and prayers have been given and received — year after year after year — and nothing much has changed.

Instead, when Harris stepped to the lectern at Emory University, she did so with a tone that sounded often angry, sometimes sad and occasionally exasperated. She laid out what happened in Atlanta and the surrounding community with clear-eyed specificity.

“Whatever the killer’s motive, these facts are clear: Six out of the eight people killed on Tuesday night were of Asian descent. Seven were women. The shootings took place in businesses owned by Asian Americans,” Harris said. “The shootings took place as violent hate crimes and discrimination against Asian Americans has risen dramatically over the last year and more.”…

“Racism is real in America, and it has always been,” Harris said. “Xenophobia is real in America and always has been. Sexism, too.”

This is the America that so often goes undiscussed in mixed company. It’s the America that people of color see and lament — often with wry, self-protective humor — to others who look like them. It’s the America that women know intimately, the one about which they educate and warn their daughters. It’s the America of recent immigrants whose hardship and halting English may belie their tenacity, intelligence and courage — traits for which they are hailed by their loved ones even as they are barely visible to others…

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Capitol Insurrection Open Thread: … The Aristocrats!

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Vanity Fair‘s sweet spot, between glossy entertainment reporting and politics. “A Private Jet of Rich Trumpers Wanted to “Stop the Steal”—But They Don’t Want You to Read This”:

At 12:11 p.m. on January 5, an eight-seat Bombardier Challenger 300 jet took off from Memphis International Airport. A little over an hour and a half and one time zone later, it touched down at Dulles, just outside of Washington, D.C. The following day a seditious horde of Donald Trump supporters, unapologetically encouraged by him, mounted an insurrection to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. “After this we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you,” the 45th president told attendees of the “Stop the Steal” rally gathered at the Ellipse, a park a little over one mile from the Hill. At 2:11 p.m. the first of the mob had breached the Capitol on the west side of the building, near the Senate chamber. At 5:34 p.m. the sergeant at arms informed lawmakers that the Capitol was secure. At 6:39 p.m. the Challenger was wheels-up, an hour behind schedule, according to flight data. It touched down in Memphis at 7:25 p.m., back in central time.

As the dust settled in the capital city, the aperture of the moment largely focused on the most violent (the ones with zip ties and stun guns) and the most outrageous (the shirtless QAnon shaman). And while lawmakers reckoned with what would come next—would Vice President Mike Pence invoke the 25th Amendment? Would the inauguration bring more violence?—a murmur began to bubble among Memphis’s lily white country-club elite. Did you hear John Dobbs flew his buddies to the capital on his private jet? A photo posted to the Instagram account of George Zanone III features the lineup: Dobbs, Zanone, Carter Campbell Sr., Vince Smith and his wife, Kaki Valerius Smith, brothers Dan and Bob McEwan, and one unidentified man mug against the backdrop of the nose of a private jet alongside the caption, “Go follow @memphispatriots,” plus a Washington, D.C., location tag. The photo disappeared from Zanone’s social media grid, otherwise a memorial to dead ducks and deer, but not before a few quietly horrified members of local society could screenshot it. As for the Bombardier Challenger? It is registered to Baron Partners, a limited liability company that shares the same address, down to the suite number, with John Hull Dobbs Jr.’s eponymous investment firm, Dobbs Equity Partners.

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Easy Targets Open Thread: Elect Clowns, Expect A Circus

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Hat tip to commentor Jeffro, for Ben Mathis-Lilley’s Slate explainer, “The Republican Freshman Class Is a Tribute to Our Nation’s Notorious Local Bozos”:

Every town, midsize city, or urban neighborhood has one, or, perhaps, a family of them: the nuisance litigants, the business owners who address zoning board hearings while visibly intoxicated, the parents who ruin PTA meetings by accusing The Polar Express of encouraging demonry. They are the regulars in the police blotter section of the newspaper, the ones who have been banned from multiple softball leagues for reasons that somehow involve child support. They are America’s local ding-dongs and loose cannons. And, increasingly, they represent the Republican Party’s interests in Congress…

Never before, though, have our nation’s area weirdos dominated one party’s media presence and priorities as they do now. With much of politics, and political fundraising, carried out through social media performance, the ability to get attention has become functionally identical to the ability to command influence, and a new herd of public figures has stampeded through the gap where the fence dividing fame from infamy used to stand. Many of them were personally inspired by Donald Trump, who got his own start as the notorious protagonist of bankruptcies and divorces in the New York City area. Area creeps are having their moment, and the Republican freshman congressional class is where they are having it. Here, a guide to its most prominently messy legislators.

Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert
Grim/colorful backstory: Boebert’s biggest moment in Congress thus far was appearing via Zoom for a committee hearing with several rifles piled haphazardly on a bookshelf behind her. (Seriously, one of them is just, like, lying on a row of books.) This makes sense given that her claim to fame as a candidate was Shooters Grill—a restaurant, which she operates with her husband, that employs waitresses who ostentatiously carry guns while working. The restaurant owed almost $20,000 in unpaid state taxes while Boebert was running for office; in 2017, a local health department determined that an unlicensed vending stand it set up at a rodeo caused as many as 80 cases of food poisoning…

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Late Night Open Thread: Pep Talk From A Pessimist

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Drew Magary, at Defector — “The Finish Line Is In Sight”:

The pandemic is winding down in the U.S. It’s not over, as responsible people will remind you. You still gotta wear a mask. You still gotta get vaccinated, if you haven’t already. You shouldn’t jump the gun like Texas or like my state (Maryland) and proudly declare every Golden Corral now open for business. You can’t go licking every toilet seat in abandon. You still gotta wait.

But not much longer…

This week—or today itself, March 11, for many people—marks the unofficial anniversary of Shit Getting Real with the pandemic. I remember all the fear that came with the pandemic’s arrival. Millions of people might die (this happened). My parents might die (this did not). I might die (still here). My kids might never be able to step inside a physical classroom ever again. The economy might wither into nothing. We might have to wait YEARS for a vaccine, if a vaccine ever came at all. The pandemic was gonna be the bill finally coming due for the human race. I’D LIKE TO SEE OL’ MANNY-KIND WRIGGLE OUT OF THIS JAM!

We’re wriggling out of it. The After is at America’s doorstep. It’s not happening in an instant. There may be a ceremonial day in the future where the U.S. records zero new COVID-related hospitalizations and the president hangs a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner across a giant COVID-19 spore. But really, you and I are already starting to get our lives back in bits and pieces. This is not an easy thing to comprehend if you’ve been as vigilant about prevention as many of us have been. I just spent the past four years lacquering myself in alternating coats of protective irony and rage, so my ability to process good news is now barely existent. I can’t witness ANY promising development right now without believing it’s a cruel trick. I’ve been conditioned for the worst.

But just this one time, the momentum has inexorably swung in mankind’s favor. I need to stop wringing my hands at EVERY sign of potential danger, because there are signs of rebirth all around if I choose to acknowledge them as such. The fact that these signs have come on the brink of springtime is not necessarily a coincidence, but rather deserves to be for the sake of poetry. I saw my first flower of the new year the other day while I was walking my dog…

I am still waiting for my shot. I’ve been overjoyed for my friends and family—and fuck it, for strangers, too!—who have gotten theirs. And yeah, I’ve definitely stewed on the sideline a bit, thinking WHEN THE FUCK IS IT MY TURN as other states lap mine. But I’ve made it this far. I’ve been hibernating, so to speak. But I know what’s coming. I can SEE it now, and I’m hardly alone. Summer rentals are already through the fucking stratosphere. Everyone wants to get drunk and naked.

And they will. The pandemic is not done with us, and it’s still ravaging the world at large. But sometimes history can surprise you by actually moving FORWARD, thanks to equal parts work and science. It’s been a long year, and yet it’s ONLY been a year. It could have been so much longer, and so much shittier. There is now proof around you that things are starting to get better. VASTLY better. I can see the finish line, and you can, too. Let’s get ready to fucking live again.

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