Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

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

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

The house always wins.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

The math demands it!

This really is a full service blog.

This is a big f—–g deal.

What fresh hell is this?

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

It’s not even safe to go out and pick up 2 days worth of poop anymore.

This is all too absurd to be reality, right?

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

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

No one could have predicted…

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Not all heroes wear capes.

How do you get liars to care about the truth?

Usually wrong but never in doubt

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

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

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

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GOP Death Cult Open Thread: DC-Area (Social Media) Traffic Alert

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From the Washington Post‘s ‘Local’ section:

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They Promised Me There Would Be No Math…

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This data update from the Gray Lady’s Upshot team (one of the good silos there) gives me hope–not (just) on the election, but for America as well. It says Trump’s problem isn’t simply, or even mostly the gender gap. Rather:

The more meaningful story in this race is the 2016-to-2020 election gap. Polls suggests that almost all groups are moving away from President Trump relative to how they voted in 2016.

The chart accompanying the article is fascinating–plotting different demographic subgroups in 2016 against their preferences now.  Everyone including white guys, and men in general, have moved away from Trump.  Not far enough in many cases, to be sure–the “all men” group has slid from just over 56% Trump in 2016 to (eyeballing here) about 52% now. But a 4 point shift in half the population ain’t chump change either.

They Promised Me There Would Be No Math...

Bigger moves become apparent in finer grained segments:

To see how the 2020 campaign has played out, however, you don’t have to look at independents or women in the suburbs — you can look at almost any group in the electorate.

Men, women, independents, suburban men and women, people 65 and over — people in these groups all report less support for Mr. Trump in 2020 than they did in 2016. But so do registered voters in rural America. Nationscape data reveals that among voters in rural America, men report moving away from Mr. Trump by six points (from 66 percent in 2016 to 60 percent in 2020), and women by four, from 54 percent to 50 percent.

The election will soon show us if these moves are enough to begin to rebuild American democracy. But even as we wait, these numbers help me with my despair over the state of the Republic. Yeah, the Trumpanzees are loud, violent, and unrelenting in their willingness to impose their foulness on the rest of us. But they are a shrinking minority: exposure to Trump over the last four years has persuaded more and more of our fellow citizens that he–and they–are unacceptable.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Chat about whatever.

Image: William Hogarth, Canvassing for votes from the Humours of an Election series, 1754-5

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Yes. They Really Are Assholes.

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Did what amounts to a symbolic bit of electioneering today–a lit drop in Salem, NH. I haven’t been nearly as active-on-the-streets as I usually am, for a variety of reasons; it’s been money and a bit of post-carding for me.

So this was my first real on-the-ground experience outside the Brookline, MA bubble–which really is a bubble. Our politics basically runs from tote-bag liberal to unreconstructed lefty, and that’s fine by me. (Like a lot of town-governed-towns, actual local politics is run by a small, deeply embedded cabal and it’s just as tricky as you might imagine, but that’s for a different post.)

New Hampshire, though it’s been pretty blue for a while now still has plenty of the Hamshirtucky that made it a rock-ribbed/crazy right wing state for a long time. So when we showed up at the local HQ in Salem NH, we were met by a wall of Trump signs and some very loud MAGATs, using a bullhorn to taunt Democrats for all kinds of things.

Yes. They Really Are Assholes. 4

One of the weirder moments in that monologue, by the way, was a sudden diversion into California mandating all-electric cars by 2035, as the highly informed and judicious asshole with the bullhorn complained about the quality of CA’s current grid. He then asserted CA is a shithole of state, and as a scion of the place, I wondered what it was that so upset him: the weather? The food? The quality of higher ed in the state? Etc.  Take it from me folks:  New Hamster has its virtues–but it’s not going to win most competitions with the Golden State.

But I digress.

What struck me was the purity of the demonstration: this was simply an expression of assholery.  This guy, at least, had some stamina, and he was a blessedly silent performer:

Yes. They Really Are Assholes.

He was doing his Trump dance for at least three hours that I could check, so give the man some points for persistence.

But this captures the tone of what was being bullhorn across the street:

Yes. They Really Are Assholes. 1

The good news is that all this involved a fair amount of local resources: ten or dozen people (none masked, of course), lots of signs, lots of energy. The D’s had three or four folks at the HQ–and all the volunteers (and there were a bunch) were out canvassing and dropping literature.  The Trumpanzees went for what really amounts to political masturbation.

So yeah, it was uncomfortable, and it was intended to be so: these scumbags wanted to make some other folks lives miserable, and between the horns (some truckers driving big rigs really enjoyed leaning on theirs) and the blather, they did a pretty good job.

Except for the fact that the Democratic GOTV effort was completely undisturbed.

But besides being forced to come to some conclusions about how these losers were raised, it was a reminder that these are not people with whom one can respectfully disagree. From the top down, they are performative jerks–on their best days.

Oh–and they cheat all the time, large and small.  One more photo (ETA: actually loaded the photo this time):

Yes. They Really Are Assholes. 2

What you’re seeing is a Trump flyer, placed in a mailbox. As everyone here likely knows (at least everyone who has canvassed in the last many decades) that’s a big no-no. Just last night in our volunteer training Zoom, they told us at least three times that it is a federal crime to do that. We saw Trump leaflets in each of the open mailboxes we passed.

Admittedly, when the tally of Trump-era crimes are totted up, this won’t rank high. But to me that’s what’s telling: there is simply no rule, no matter how minor, that they won’t break.

Fuck ’em. Let’s roll their sorry asses through Tuesday. Even my cup of coffee agrees:

Yes. They Really Are Assholes. 3

This thread.

It is open for anything.

Image: Jan Pietersz. Saenredam, The Fool, between 1590 and 1600.

 

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“Outside Agitators”: It Was Right-Wing Boogaloo Bois That Burned That Minneapolis Police Station

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The Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

… A sworn affidavit by the FBI underlying the complaint reveals new details about a far-right anti-government group’s coordinated role in the violence that roiled through civil unrest over Floyd’s death while in police custody.

Ivan Harrison Hunter, a 26-year-old from Boerne, Texas, is charged with one count of interstate travel to incite a riot for his alleged role in ramping up violence during the protests in Minneapolis on May 27 and 28. According to charges, Hunter, wearing a skull mask and tactical gear, shot 13 rounds at the south Minneapolis police headquarters while people were inside. He also looted and helped set the building ablaze, according to the complaint, which was filed Monday under seal.

Unrest flared throughout Minneapolis following Floyd’s death, which was captured on a bystander’s cellphone video, causing Gov. Tim Walz to activate the Minnesota National Guard. As police clashed with protesters, Hunter and other members of the Boogaloo Bois discussed in private Facebook messages their plans to travel to Minneapolis and rally at the Cub Foods across from the third precinct, according to federal court documents. One of the people Hunter coordinated with posted publicly to social media: “Lock and load boys. Boog flags are in the air, and the national network is going off,” the complaint states.

Two hours after the police precinct was set on fire, Hunter texted with another Boogaloo member in California, a man named Steven Carrillo.

“Go for police buildings,” Hunter told Carrillo, according to charging documents.

“I did better lol,” he replied. A few hours earlier, Carrillo had killed a Federal Protective Services Officer in Oakland, Calif., according to criminal charges filed against him in California…

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Womens March(es), This Weekend?

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I saw a story in the Washington Post about this some time ago, but there hasn’t been anything on the twitter feeds I read, and there is so much news every day these days! Anybody planning on attending one of these events, virtually or IRL?

The Washington Post, yesterday — “Women’s March will bring thousands of marchers to D.C. and cities nationwide this weekend”:

The Women’s March will return to the nation’s capital and to hundreds of cities across the country on Saturday, drawing thousands of people to the streets in the middle of a pandemic to protest the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett and to urge Americans to vote President Trump out of office.

In Washington, D.C., organizers expect between 6,000 and 10,000 people to gather on Freedom Plaza for a midday rally focused on voting rights and calling on Congress to suspend the Supreme Court confirmation process, according to a permit issued by the National Park Service on Wednesday. After the rally, participants will march to the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Capitol…

Saturday’s Women’s March in D.C. is expected to be one of at least 415 marches and events taking place in person and virtually in cities across the country, O’Leary Carmona said. That’s significantly fewer marches than the first Women’s March in 2017, when millions of people flooded the streets in about 700 marches across the country in a historic demonstration protesting Trump’s inauguration.

But O’Leary Carmona said organizers aim to reach the same number of marches as they did in 2018, when about 500 events were planned nationwide. Among the events planned for Saturday are golf-cart processions, car caravans and a march that will begin at Ginsburg’s college dorm at Cornell University.

Unlike during past years’ marches in the nation’s capital, Women’s March leaders are hoping for a relatively smaller crowd in the District because of social distancing concerns. They are discouraging participants from traveling to D.C. from states that are on the self-quarantine list and are not involved in organizing any buses from other cities. Instead, they encourage supporters to attend local marches or to get involved with its “text-a-thon” efforts, O’Leary Carmona said…

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Semi-Respite Open Thread: “Typefaces of Protest”

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With thanks to commentor DMSilev…

The Spousal Unit particularly liked Bayeux Moderne, but my personal favorite is Winsome Light. You know she’s serious, cuz the hearts over her “I”s have been downgraded to mere empty circles!

This was a reply to that thread, and it might actually be of use to some of you for future marches:

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Long Read: Trump Didn’t ‘Send In The Troops.’ They Were Already There.

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C. J. Chivers has written a great piece on using military troops in civil disorders.

Chivers was a Marine, and participated in one of these exercises many years ago. He shares his own feelings and what he sees now as a reporter. His writing about military issues, particularly the feelings of the troops, is as sensitive as anything I’ve seen anywhere. He’s a great writer.

[Disclosure: I know him a little from having been a source on technical material at various times.]

It is a long read, so there’s no one piece I can pull out to summarize it. Here are a few samples:

How a government prepares for and uses violence — including when, why and against whom — contains on some level a declaration about what kind of government that government is. At Tustin, we passed out ammunition, quickly practiced riot-control formations in front of television-news crews and then headed into Los Angeles and cities nearby. As my company arrived in Compton, I’d like to say we understood the context of the role we were given: that even a limited Marine deployment in a genuinely extreme situation would run inevitably into the ugly history of state force in the United States, and who receives the brunt of it. But domestic crowd control had never been our specialty, and because this was 1992, a time before Google and smartphones, we could not readily call anyone or look anything up.

After the mass demonstrations following a white Minneapolis police officer’s killing of George Floyd while his fellow officers looked on, officials in the United States deliberated once again over whether to send American combat troops into cities. The discussion was driven by threats or calls for military action from both President Trump and Senator Tom Cotton, who urged “no quarter” against “insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters and looters” — a proposal for merciless violence against American citizens, including in ill-defined categories, that sounded both reckless and illegal. Official threats of state violence can be little more than performance, a kind of law-and-order signaling, and it was not clear how seriously Trump considered following through. But it was impossible, upon hearing Trump’s and Cotton’s bellicosity, not to remember how close my Marines came, in the confusion of a job they were not trained to do, to killing a child.

Baku, Azerbaijan, 2005: The degree of control was chilling, reflecting the unstated but perfectly clear logic of a confident, contemptuous power. It was not just that in any contest for the street, the government and its forces enjoyed a lopsided advantage and would use it — a position hardly unique to authoritarian rule. It was that the kleptocracy wanted this crackdown seen and transmitted, so any would-be Azeri activists would know what to expect if they challenged the state’s central tenet, which was that the Aliyevs would never willingly yield what they saw as theirs. Brute force and the ability to command it — not elections — determined who got to hold power and run the national rackets. State violence did more than clear the streets. It served as lesson and show. Almost 15 years later, Ilham Aliyev is still president.

Read the whole thing. And open thread!

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