Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I can’t take this shit today. I just can’t.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

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

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

This fight is for everything.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

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

They are all Michael Cohen now.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

The math demands it!

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It might be fine, or it might be a clusterfuck.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

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GOP Death Cult Open Thread: ‘Leader’ Mitch McConnell Wants to Destroy America’s Economy

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“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”

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Excellent Cryptocurrency Read: ‘This Is All Exactly What It Looks Like’

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There are the many liberative and exciting things that cryptocurrency might someday be and be used for, and then there is what cryptocurrency currently is, and how it actually gets used. Neither, strictly speaking, is anything that a normal person would really need to know or care about unless that normal person is the victim of a ransomware scam, or wants to buy drugs on the internet, or needs to discreetly send $250,000 to Roger Stone. For now, this is what it is: something that’s absolutely real, but also abstracted and howlingly sketchy even relative to other speculative investment vehicles and obscure even when compared to the other memetic fads that our moment’s reigning cretins tend to favor. The discourse around it is absolutely catastrophic, just disastrously obnoxious and dishonest and stilted at every turn, but that is generally true when it comes to conversations about money.

It is not unreasonable to be suspicious of this, both because of who is making the argument and how they are making it. Cryptocurrency, at least as it is sold by its most fervent adherents—the most prominent of those are men already famous for being rich, with a greasy substrate of rise-and-grind influencer types pumping and dumping and posting and posting and posting away just beneath—is rhetorically much more ambitious than the previous innovations that promised to Change The World for the better. Another reason for skepticism is that those previous innovations, when pitched by this type of person, all quickly wound up resolving to abetting ever bleaker new frontiers of serf labor, or expediting and optimizing the process through which aspiring genocidaires around the world get their social media posts in front of the most receptive possible audiences.

But also there is just the reality of how and what cryptocurrency actually is, which is, as SEC chair Gary Gensler said last week, “a highly speculative asset class.” When the Biden Administration tentatively moved to tax and regulate cryptocurrency transactions, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained the decision by saying, “To the extent [cryptocurrency] is used, I fear it’s often for illicit finance. It’s an extremely inefficient way of conducting transactions, and the amount of energy that’s consumed in processing those transactions is staggering.” Advocates’ response to this series of basically true observations is less a rebuttal than a blithe counterproposal to the effect that 1) none of that matters and also is all being fixed, and 2) the new money will bring about world peace so honestly how dare you…

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Corruption Feeds Corruption

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Josh Marshall has been doing good work trying to figure out Kyrsten Sinema, with the help of his readers. His latest letter from a reader has this conclusion:

She’s in a DC bubble of her own making. She has virtually no in-state presence, no public schedule, no press conferences, no interaction with regular voters, and other than industry-funded SuperPACs, no support system. She’s in a tough spot, and she put herself there.

The problem here is obvious: as her polling in state looks worse, Sinema will want more money for her Senate run. Since she’s unpopular with the kind of people who send monthly donations via ActBlue, her other option is to double down on things that corporate donors like.

All of Josh’s posts about Sinema are behind a paywall, but the gist of them is that she’s sending lots of direct mail to “independents” because she thinks her re-election hinges on making them happy. In other words, she thinks she’s the next John McCain. The problem with that strategy is that winning in a purple state requires both an energized base and popularity among independents. That energized base will be the one doing your GOTV.

Even in blue states, Senators get out and talk to regular constituents. Pre-COVID, Chuck Schumer could reliably be found at one or more Rochester festivals, accompanied by a staffer holding a sign saying “Meet Chuck Schumer”. If Josh’s correspondent is right, and Sinema is relatively absent from the state, she’s going to be even more beholden to corporate cash instead of in-state donors.

Being a Senator is a performative act in many ways. But floucing on the floor to reject a $15/hour minimum wage with a thumbs down (a clear homage to McCain’s better vote), posting on Instagram with a “fuck off” ring, and taking a two-week paid internship in California making wine rather than spending time in your state aren’t the performances that will gain you votes.

It’s beyond fucking annoying that this donor-beholden political dimwit/flake is one of the reasons the Biden agenda is in danger.

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Thursday Morning Open Thread: Uphill Battle

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Open Thread: Our Failed Media Would-Be Celebrities

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Too many of our ‘elite’ media members have decided they want to be the STARS of the show, not just the people who tell the rest of us about it. That’s why so many right-wing ‘reporters’ make fools of themselves at Jen Psaki’s press conferences — even getting pigbladdered for an inane question is a kind of spotlight, a little taste of celebrity. He mighto occasionally have put their careers, or even their lives, in jeopardy, but TFG gave good teevee…

For one brief shining moment… they could imagine themselves, every one, in the spotlight…

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I Can’t Believe Mozzie is Gone

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I Can't Believe Mozzie is GoneIf this has been talked about here, I missed it.  I adored Mozzie on White Collar and I loved his guest appearances on Hawaii Five-0.  I never watched Sex and the City, but he was a bright light in everything I saw him in.

This last tweet from him made me cry.

He was so young.  I never knew his name until tonight.  He will always be Mozzie to me.

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