Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Screw the Judean People’s Front. Splitters.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Verified, but limited!

It’s a tarp!

Han shot first.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

We Survived Breitbartpocalypse!

Militantly superior in their own minds…

No one could have predicted…

A snarling mass of vitriolic vicious jackals

I thought we were promised Infrastructure Week

Women: They Get Shit Done

We still have time to mess this up!

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

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

This is how realignments happen…

We have all the best words.

We can agree to disagree, but I’m right.

This is a big f—–g deal.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Wetsuit optional.

What fresh hell is this?

Shock troops for the Unitarian Jihad.

Hot Air and Ill Informed Banter

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Late Night Open Thread: Floriduh Driver

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(From the tags on the front, looks to be this guy — FL insurance adjuster & Trump fan)

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‘Season of Giving’ Open Thread: Spare A Thought for the Locally-Grown, Artisanal Bigots & Hypocrites

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The multinational big-box kleptocrats, with the Oval Office Occupant as their spokesthing, are making it impossible for the traditional regional hatemongers to get the earned media (free publicity) they rely upon to survive!

Take, for instance, newly-minted reparative-justice advocate and unindicted insurance-fraud Republican Darrel Issa:


“If the soulless legislative middle managers are gonna keep a stand-up guy like Duncan Hunter from voting with us, just because he’s pled guilty to robbing wounded veterans to pay for his golf fees, cigar bars, and at least five extramarital liaisons with lobbyists and staffers… who’s gonna be left to accuse the Democrats of immorality and lawlessness? (ME!, that’s who)”

… In August, Issa announced that he had launched an exploratory committee to consider a potential bid for Hunter’s seat, which prompted him to withdraw his nomination by Trump for a trade post.

The Union-Tribune noted that unlike other challengers running for Hunter’s seat, Issa has not criticized the embattled Republican congressman.

On Thursday, the House Ethics Committee urged Hunter to “refrain from voting on any question at a meeting of the House or of the Committee of the Whole House,” citing a House rule regarding convicted lawmakers…

Not to mention the sad status of favorite blog chewtoy Little Prince Rand, who can’t get any front-page MSM attention for the kind of puke-funnel performance that used to be worth thousands from his donors / voters…

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It Wasn’t Balloon Juice

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Just a quick programming note to say that the site interruptions this evening were not the result of a problem with our site – they were the result of problems way further up the networking chain. So there’s that, at least!

Since John thinks that all/most/some of us are insufferable pricks who complain all the time, maybe you guys can use this thread to comment about the things you do like about the new site?

Surely there must be something!

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If a Thousand Dollar Car Was Worth a Damn, Why Would Anybody Spend $10 Grand?

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This:

And, of course, this:

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Friday Morning Open Thread: Be Prepared

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As House Democrats geared up for their first impeachment hearing last month, Speaker Nancy Pelosi huddled in her office with her leadership team, downplaying expectations.

Don’t expect these hearings to trigger a massive shift in public support toward ousting President Trump, Pelosi (D-Calif.) told her colleagues the night before the hearing, according to Democrats familiar with her warning who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the encounter frankly.

Those words of caution — delivered as House Intelligence Committee members prepared in the Capitol basement for the next day’s hearing — reflected the innate skepticism that has influenced her every move as she has guided her Democratic majority through a tumultuous moment in the nation’s history…

But with a five-minute nationally televised address Thursday morning, she has become the ­reluctant face of the impeachment effort, donning a role she never wanted at a time when she’d rather be talking about anything else.

“I’m really sorry the president made this necessary by his complete disregard for the vision of our founders,” she told reporters Thursday. “An impeachment is not a pleasant experience. It can be divisive. We don’t take any glee in this at all. It’s heartbreaking. But the president gave us no choice.”.…

Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), a former CIA officer who was among the “national security freshmen” who pushed Pelosi toward supporting an impeachment inquiry, praised her handling of the process. From the beginning, she said, she asked Pelosi to ensure that the investigation was done in a strategic, efficient and serious manner, and she said Pelosi has followed through.

“I really can’t stand anything that celebrates this moment we’re in, because if you’re from a place like Michigan — swing state, you know, where your neighbors have different political views than you do — that tension is seeping into our everyday lives and no one’s happy about it,” she said. “I think she has set an important tone.”

Slotkin added that Pelosi has kept the moderate freshmen at the top of her priority list, making sure their bills are passing the House and tending closely to their political needs. Slotkin pointed to one of her top priorities — allowing patients to have immediate access to prescription drug prices from their doctors’ offices. The House passed the bill Oct. 29, two days before the House formalized its impeachment probe…

When the dust settles, there will still be legislation that needs to be made. Pelosi may or (Trickster forbid) may not be around to keep shepherding the Democratic cats, but she’s doing her best to make sure that the rules will not be forgotten and that somebody will be there to implement them.

We can hope Pelosi gets some credit in the history books, because she sure won’t get any from her very-woke “allies”…

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Cat Transport Bleg: Minnesota to Virginia

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From commenter TomatoQueen:
Edith’s black kitty, Merlin, is ready to come live with me. Travel will be from Minnesota to Virginia in December. The flight parent is Schlemazel’s niece LauraToo, who is presently visiting Australia but will be home in time to bring me Merlin on December 11th. Here is the PayPal link to help defray the cost, so if you all can help, it would be greatly appreciated.

You all know what to do!

Open thread!

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WH Xmas Open Thread: “The Spirit of America”… Is Very, Very White

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… White paper stars hang from the ceiling of the East Colonnade, a passageway that has been transformed by arches lined with clear plastic panels printed with white line drawings of more than 60 examples of American architecture and innovation. They spring from the ground like an austere garden of blueprints…

…[A]s she’s done before, she released a video of herself filmed during her final walk-through on Sunday after returning from Thanksgiving in Palm Beach, Fla. In it, she’s looking at an advent calendar in the shape of the White House, adjusting ribbons, and sprinkling fake snow on trees in the Grand Foyer and Cross Hall, which was filled with evergreens covered in white lights or gold paint…

Whatever tastes viewers have, the first lady’s devotion to Christmas decorating cannot be quibbled with. This year she began preparations as early as July, according to an Instagram post that showed her looking at an array of flowers and fabric swatches. This is within the normal holiday decor preparation time for first ladies, but most other first ladies have not trumpeted that fact. The Trumps have also had fewer state dinners than their predecessors. Such events are usually an opportunity for first families to show off their style. That leaves the Christmas decorations as the preeminent expression of Melania Trump’s tastes…

Former model Melania Trump finally has the advertising budget she dreamed about when she was doing all those degrading cattle calls and low-rent catalog shoots, and yet all the classy designers turn up their noses, murmuring about ‘overextended already, I’m afraid’ and ‘not exactly the kind of job where our staff is at its best, if you know what I mean.’

She wanted “extremely upscale fashion boutique” and had to settle for “mid-range Midwestern shopping mall in one of the more expensive suburbs.” Sure, it excited the Qanon crowd, but those people see portents in their alphabet soup. Even the Wingnut Wurlitzer praise seems pretty pro-forma this year (presumably someone on Melania’s staff is assigned to picking out twitter highlights)… probably they’ve just got too many other Trump-related circuses to defend / promote.

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George Zimmerman Strives to Out Asshole POTUS

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Man, fuck this guy:

George Zimmerman was acquitted in the fatal 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin, but according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Florida, he believes there was a conspiracy to frame him and wants $100 million in damages.

Attorney Larry Klayman announced the lawsuit in tandem with a Coral Gables screening of a documentary titled “The Trayvon Martin Hoax,” which has since been canceled. Zimmerman was scheduled to appear alongside Klayman at a Thursday news conference, but hours later, Klayman said the news conference was canceled, too.

The chief allegation in the lawsuit is that civil rights attorney Ben Crump helped to swap out a reluctant witness, Brittany Diamond Eugene, for her half-sister, Rachel Jeantel, and helped prepare her to deliver a script intended to land Zimmerman in prison for the 17-year-old’s killing on February 26, 2012. Crump began representing Trayvon’s parents starting February 28, 2012, the lawsuit says.

First off, HOW THE FUCK DO YOU FRAME SOMEONE FOR MURDER WHEN THEY CLAIMED SELF DEFENSE?

Second, fuck this guy. Guy murdered a kid for being black in Zimmerman’s neighborhood while he was playing cosplay cop, got away with it, then auctioned off the gun he used to execute the kid for 150 grand, and then followed that up by being a general scumbag and public menace all while profiting off his art work.

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Speaker Pelosi’s Statement

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Speaker Pelosi is scheduled to deliver an impeachment status update at 9 AM:

Will Pelosi fast-track impeachment as expected according to the “urgent new argument” CNN reports on below, or is all this talk of an expedited impeachment a briar patch gambit?

Democrats are injecting an urgent new argument into their already fast-moving impeachment drive: President Donald Trump poses such a flagrant threat to the republic that there is no time to waste.

Their emerging gambit is prompting Trump’s GOP defenders — who have long struggled to coalesce around a coherent strategy of their own — to launch a fresh counterattack, warning that that a rush to condemn the President proves the Democratic case is shallow and politically motivated. The President himself appeared to contradict that defense Thursday morning, tweeting, “if you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so we can have a fair trial in the Senate, and so that our Country can get back to business.”

I have no idea, but maybe this statement will clear that up. On Twitter, Trump is babbling about calling Schiff and Joe Biden in to testify in the senate trial. Giuliani is running around Europe right now doing the dirty work that Ukrainian President Zelensky did not have to do thanks to the whistleblower, i.e., manufacture dirt on the Bidens.

Interesting times. Open thread.

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Thursday Morning Open Thread: No Stopping, No Going Back

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gop will say anything for trump - tom toles

(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)

From the Washington Post:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff left little doubt with fellow Democrats Wednesday that they plan to move swiftly to impeach President Trump as soon as this month.

According to multiple Democratic lawmakers who attended a closed-door Capitol meeting, Pelosi announced no firm decision or timeline in moving toward a vote on Trump’s impeachment. But, a day after Schiff delivered a 300-page report detailing charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress against Trump, she made clear what lies ahead in the House.

“Are you ready?” Pelosi (D-Calif.) asked her colleagues, after describing grave constitutional circumstances posed by Trump’s alleged wrongdoing surrounding his dealings with Ukraine and his subsequent decision to stonewall the House investigation into it.

The caucus, according to multiple members, erupted with shouts of approval.

“We’re moving forward,” said one member, summarizing the thrust of Pelosi’s remarks and speaking on condition of anonymity to candidly describe a private meeting. “We’ve got a job to do whether people want to testify or not.”

Pelosi then turned the room over to Schiff (D-Calif.), who received a standing ovation before saying a word, the members said.

Schiff proceeded to run through the major findings of the report, add context to some of the key events the inquiry has uncovered, and explained to colleagues why, among other things, he did not wait for additional witnesses — such as former national security adviser John R. Bolton, who met with Trump to discuss Ukraine policy — before issuing his report…

In a separate closed-door meeting elsewhere in the Capitol basement, Vice President Pence rallied Republicans against impeachment — encouraging the GOP rank-and-file to “turn up the heat” on House Democrats and accuse them of focusing on impeachment instead of solving the nation’s problems.

Pence praised Republicans for sticking together and defending the president, telling them he and Trump were proud of their work standing up for the president. He also criticized Pelosi and House Democrats for what he called shameful behavior — not just the impeachment proceedings against Trump but also claiming Democrats had turned a blind eye to other issues that affect people’s everyday lives…

cold warrior putin has gop on ice - matt davies

(Matt Davies via GoComics.com)

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Open Thread: Prezdint Snowflake Scampers Off to His Safe Space

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… And yet, we’re stuck with this putz. You’ve all probably seen the video by now, and what a video it is…


Even his dedicated NYTimes courtiers couldn’t buff a gloss on this turd:

President Trump arrived in London Monday evening planning to tout a foreign policy accomplishment his presidential campaign wants him to run on: successfully pressuring allies to pay more toward the costs of running NATO.

Less than 48 hours later — after he was put on the defensive in front of the cameras and then was the subject of gossip at a private reception of world leaders, a moment caught in a viral video — Mr. Trump canceled a planned news conference before heading back to Washington earlier than planned.

The timing was not perfect. Mr. Trump had hoped the 70th anniversary celebration of NATO might provide a flattering stage and a triumphant narrative, even as Democrats on Capitol Hill on Wednesday trotted out sober legal scholars to testify at the House Judiciary Committee’s first public impeachment hearing…

show full post on front page

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Quick Site Maintenance

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Will keep this brief, because Adam’s post below is far more important than this, but I wanted to keep you all up to date.

1.) We are going to darken the whiteness of the screen a little bit, and make the text a little bit darker. We will do it slightly, but we can not tailor the site to every individual person and we do not want to run into accessibility issues.

2.) If you have noticed, there are no ads running right now. This is because we were informed by the new ad provider (different from the old one) that we have been flagged for objectionable content. The two posts that flagged objectionable content were, hysterically, ones by Cheryl and Tamara, two of the LEAST offensive front pagers. I went through the posts, and what got flagged was ***NOT*** the actual post by either of those two, but you assholes going off in the comments. Superb work, folks. We are handling this in two ways. First, we are looking for an ad provider with different standards, while we are also going through and replacing all 245,435 instances of the word “fuck” with “f#ck.” Similarly “objectionable” words will receive the same treatment. Never a dull moment with you people. Regardless, ads should hopefully reappear in a few days.

3.) While reading some of the complaints in recent threads, I thought it would be perhaps helpful (although I doubt it), if I once again noted that the website is not built for YOU and YOU alone. It’s built to serve the needs of the vast majority of people. Submitting tickets and endlessly posting about things you don’t *like* is not the same as posting about things that don’t *work*. The former is just a pain in the ass, the latter is actually helpful. Also, you codgers, *different* does not always mean *worse*. It just means different. Yes, I know pudding night was on Tuesday night on the old version of the site, but for a myriad of complex reasons, pudding night is now on Wednesday. Please bear with us.

Finally, I highly recommend f.lux for everyone. It makes your screen sync to the time of day, changing the brightness and warmth of the screen. I use it on every device I own. It’s outstanding.

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Black PSYOP Part IV: Rudy Giuliani’s European OANN Adventure is the Black PSYOP’s Sixth Line of Operation

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Black PSYOP IV: Rudy Giuliani's European OANN Adventure 1*

Ken Vogel at The New York Times has reported that Rudy Giuliani, the President’s personal attorney, is in Kyiv via Budapest. Vogel’s reporting clarifies Giuliani’s tweet from yesterday about a collaboration he is working on with One America News Network (OANN), which is a niche, far right news outlet.

From The New York Times:

Even as Democrats intensified their scrutiny this week of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s role in the pressure campaign against the Ukrainian government that is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry, Mr. Giuliani has been in Europe continuing his efforts to shift the focus to purported wrongdoing by President Trump’s political rivals.

Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, met in Budapest on Tuesday with a former Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, who has become a key figure in the impeachment inquiry. He then traveled to Kyiv on Wednesday seeking to meet with other former Ukrainian prosecutors whose claims have been embraced by Republicans, including Viktor Shokin and Kostiantyn H. Kulyk, according to people familiar with the effort.

The former prosecutors, who have faced allegations of corruption, all played some role in promoting claims about former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a former United States ambassador to Ukraine and Ukrainians who disseminated damaging information about Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in 2016.

Mr. Giuliani is using the trip, which has not been previously reported, to help prepare more episodes of a documentary series for a conservative television outlet promoting his pro-Trump, anti-impeachment narrative. His latest moves to advance the theories propounded by the prosecutors amount to an audacious effort to give the president’s supporters new material to undercut the House impeachment proceedings and an eventual Senate trial.

The European trip was organized around the filming of a multipart television series featuring Mr. Giuliani that is being produced and aired by a conservative cable channel, One America News, or OAN.

OANN has very little actual platform presence. It is not carried by most of the major cable providers and Nielsen doesn’t provide ratings for it. But that’s not the point of making and airing this documentary. The actual purpose of the documentary is to get it made so that it can be aired, in its entirety or in snippets, on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. This is the sixth line of operation in the domestic Black PSYOP to launder misinformation, disinformation, and agitprop about what actually happened with Russia’s act of war against the US by interfering in the 2016 presidential election in order to blame Ukraine for conspiring with Secretary Clinton, her campaign, as well as the Director of the FBI, the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of Central Intelligence, the Democratic National Committee, Vice President Biden, the mainstream media, and Alexandria Chalupa to steal the election from the President and to frame Russia for doing so. This is, of course, a lie. It is factually inaccurate. And it has been debunked repeatedly.

43% of Americans get their news from Facebook, 21% from YouTube, and 12% from Twitter. And 61% of those who get their news from Facebook are women and 62% of those who get their news from Facebook are white. That’s the primary target for the Black PSYOP’s sixth line of operation. The secondary targets are everyone they share it with and everyone who sees it once it is picked up and covered by mainstream news media outlets. Once OANN makes and broadcasts the video, the video in its entirety, as well as the soundbites edited for the most informational influence and effect, will be weaponized through Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to promote this misinformation, disinformation, and agitprop.

The real problem in trying to deal with this evolving Black PSYOP is that everyone keeps responding as if Walter Cronkite was still anchoring the nightly news. So the Black PSYOP is being conducted without actually discussing and understanding  how information, especially news as a type of information, is experienced by Americans in 2019 as opposed to 1974! The news media, the candidates, and their campaigns need to get their heads around this reality. And they need to come up with strategies for dealing with it, as well as with the Black PSYOP campaign and its various lines of operations that are exploiting it so that Americans aren’t so misinformed that they cannot determine what is and is not true, factual, and real.

Open thread!

* I have chosen this image because it is an inversion of the actual Psychological Operations Regimental Crest – the knight is facing the wrong way and the colors are black. I have done so to symbolize the inversion and misuse of psychological operations against Americans. Propagandizing American citizens by members of the government is illegal under The 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act.

The actual crest for the US Army Psychological Operations Regiment is a golden knight rampant to dexter (in profile and facing left) with two golden thunderbolt bladed swords crossed behind it surrounded by a laurel wreath. The motto is “Persuade, Change, Influence”. The crest is described as:

The laurel wreath symbolizes honor and achievement. The center device is adapted from the Psychological Operations collar insignia. The chess knight represents the ability to act obliquely and influence all types of warfare. The lightning bolt swords denote speed and the ability to strike anywhere. The silver gray, white and black represent the three types of Psychological Operations. White represents the overt processes, black is for the covert and gray for the hidden. The Insignia was authorized November 18, 1998.

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RIP Originalism, 2019

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If you haven’t been following the impeachment hearings, apparently Democrats asked some expert witnesses what they believed the founding fathers would think of Trump’s behavior and whether or not they would find it an impeachable offense. This has Republican witness Jonathan Turley (LUL) and Republicans very het up, because as we all know, trying to figure out what is in the minds of the deceased is preposterous.

Unfortunately, that is the EXACT FUCKING judicial philosophy the Republicans have been pushing for the last forty years. RIP, originalism:

That meaning must be the objective meaning — not the reader’s subjective understanding or preferred reading. And that meaning must be the original meaning — that is, the meaning the Constitution’s words and phrases would have had to reasonably informed readers of the English language at the time they were used, in context, and accounting for any specialized usages or term-of-art phrases. Any other reading is pure anachronism, a misuse of language.

This single correct method of constitutional interpretation travels under many names. I call it “original-public-meaning textualism,” emphasizing the text and the requirement that it be taken in its known, original sense. A convenient (if imprecise) shorthand term is simply “Originalism.” It contrasts, sharply, with any of a variety of progressive theories under which the Constitution’s meaning shifts, morphs, evolves, or otherwise transmogrifies to suit the needs or circumstances of the moment — and, typically, to serve the interpreter’s desired political agenda.

There is functionally no distinction from going back in time and looking at Madison’s writings and applying them to whether or not Trump committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” and the judicial philosophy of originalism.

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Birb! (Open Thread)

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A little birb told me we’ll be treated to some spectacular bird photos later this week, featuring a photographer who produces images far superior to mine. But in the meantime, I’m sharing this Belted Kingfisher I saw a while ago:

I love these bad-ass little birds for their punk ‘dos, pugnacious attitudes and ratcheting calls. If they think you’re getting too near their young, they’ll swoop on your ass with the fury of 10,000 valkyries.

Let this photo also dispel the notion that Florida doesn’t experience seasonal foliage changes. It’s not as dramatic as it is up north, but there are subtle changes everywhere, and trees in the central to northern part of the state display beautiful fall colors.

Anyhoo, open thread — impeachment hearing thread is downstairs, though that’s up for discussion here too if you like.

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