Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Militantly superior in their own minds…

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Han shot first.

Gastritis Broke My Calculator

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity.

What fresh hell is this?

Not all heroes wear capes.

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

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Shocking, but not surprising.

This blog will pay for itself.

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

A snarling mass of vitriolic vicious jackals

The house always wins.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Too inconsequential to be sued

Nevertheless, she persisted

Just a few bad apples.

Also, too.

We still have time to mess this up!

How has Obama failed you today?

An army of rabid, anonymous commenters

I personally stopped the public option…

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Enhanced Protest Techniques

Open Thread: Capital City Under Siege Fights Back

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But seriously: Be careful out there, people…

… Starting at 6 a.m. Saturday, police will close much of downtown to vehicle traffic, creating a pedestrian-only demonstration zone stretching between the southern boundary of the Mall and L Street NW to the north. The western boundary is along 19th Street NW, and the eastern edge is roughly Ninth Street NW through downtown and Third Street NW along the Mall.

A fortified perimeter around the White House, including a tall black fence that was erected late this week after days of volatile confrontations between police and demonstrators, will remain.

Unlike many other large-scale demonstrations that the District hosts, no one person or organization is leading Saturday’s events.

Nearly a dozen different demonstrations run by as many organizations or individuals have been advertised for Saturday, starting at 6 a.m. and running into the night. Many protesters plan to stay out until the early hours of Sunday morning.

There are no leaders to speak to and no agenda to follow…

Even Black Lives Matter DC has repeatedly announced this week that it is not behind all the grass-roots activism that has taken hold and flooded the city with protesters. Online, people from around the Washington region and neighboring states announced their intention to join and encouraged others to do the same.

D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said no arrests have been made during protests since Tuesday. He said he hoped that that streak would continue as he expected on Saturday to see the largest crowd since protests began in the city on May 29…

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Repub Stupidity Open Thread: Blowhard Discovers What ‘Petard’ Means…

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… The statement cites an instance in October 2019 when Gaetz and other Republicans entered the closed-door deposition of Pentagon official Laura Cooper during the impeachment proceedings against Trump. After demanding that Democrats hold open hearings, Gaetz and his colleagues remained in the meeting room for hours, eventually ordering pizza.

Gaetz also attempted to sit in on the deposition of former National Security Council member Fiona Hill in October 2019 but was asked to leave because he did not belong to the committee in charge of receiving Hill’s testimony.

In the complaint, a copy of which was sent to Newsweek by the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, Gaetz’s acts were described as “improper, unprofessional and unethical and were meant only to feed Gaetz’s unjustifiable large ego and penchant for grandstanding.”

“Impeachment proceedings are a legal process leading to a trial, and therefore covered by the Florida bar’s rules of conduct,” wrote Miami-Dade Democratic Party Chair Steve Simeonidis in the statement. “But Republican Attorney General Bill Barr isn’t going to hold a member of his own party responsible. So we must appeal to our state’s institutions to restrain this rogue lawyer who has obstructed the impeachment process twice, and generally treats the powers of his elected office like a personal plaything.”…

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Cold Grey Iowa Caucus Pre-Dawn Open Thread: Proof of Concept

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We are not a joke, people! (Well, not a *deliberate* joke… )

We devout Cynics were told not to badmouth the Bernistas’ proclivity to attack Democrats instead of the greater enemy, Trump. When the voting finally started, we were told, Senator Sanders and his closest aides would quickly pull his supporters into line, for the greater good. Because they were mature adults, not hobbyists nursing their adolescent fantasies of exclusion and revenge.

Yeah, well, Iowa — and the Iowa caucus structure the Sanders campaign fought so hard to preserve — certainly provided some valuable lessons, yes it did!

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Domestic Terrorism Open Thread: Good for Governor Northam

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… A sense of crisis enveloped the capital of Virginia on Thursday, with the police on heightened alert and Richmond bracing for possible violence ahead of a gun rally next week that is expected to draw white supremacists and other anti-government extremists.

Members of numerous armed militias and white power proponents vowed to converge on the city despite the state of emergency declared by Gov. Ralph Northam, who temporarily banned weapons from the grounds of the State Capitol. The potential for an armed confrontation prompted fears of a rerun of the 2017 far-right rally that left one person dead and some two dozen injured in Charlottesville, about an hour’s drive from Monday’s rally.

The unease increased after the F.B.I. announced the arrest on Thursday of three armed men suspected of being members of a neo-Nazi hate group, including a former Canadian Army reservist, who had obtained weapons and discussed participating in the Richmond rally. The men were linked to The Base, a group that aims to create a white ethnostate, according to the F.B.I.

For weeks, discussions about the rally have lit up Facebook pages and chat rooms frequented by militia members and white supremacists. Various extremist organizations or their adherents are calling Monday’s rally the “boogaloo.” In the lexicon of white supremacists, that is an event that will accelerate the race war they have anticipated for decades…

The rally on Monday, the holiday marking the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was initially organized to protest the Virginia Legislature’s proposed restrictions on gun purchases.

The organizer, the Virginia Citizens Defense League, is prominent in the state’s Second Amendment rights movement, donating tens of thousands of dollars to lawmakers over the years. Its president, Philip Van Cleave, refers to himself as an extremist but issued a statement saying the rally was meant to be a peaceful protest about gun rights.

In the past, its lobbying efforts were focused on loosening the state’s gun laws.

But with a new Democratic majority in the Legislature, the group has made it clear that Monday’s event will be focused on opposing sweeping gun control measures that could be enacted next week....

On Thursday, the House of Delegates and the Senate held their regularly scheduled sessions under tighter-than-normal security by the Capitol Police. The Senate approved several gun control measures, including a bill that limits people to buying only one gun each month.

Also Thursday, a circuit court judge upheld the governor’s temporary ban on weapons in the area around the Capitol from Friday until Tuesday…

The F.B.I. has grown increasingly concerned about The Base as it has worked to recruit more people. The group encourages the onset of anarchy, according to the Counter Extremism Project, an organization that tracks far-right extremists. Experts say that its founder, an American, appears to be living in Russia…

Of course not every ‘gun rights activist’ is a racist, nor is every racist an ammosexual — but is it surprising how much the two groups overlap?

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread: It Still Matters

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And also:

Furthermore:

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Noisy Futility Open Thread: Friday Night Party Edition

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There’s a subsect of Performatively Woke social media that will never stop resenting the Boomer Generation who (according to some vaguely remembered high school history slideshow) unfairly scored all the really cool public protests. Willowy young people with flowers’n’beads! Wall-to-wall coverage on the three existing tv news channels! LBJ and Kissinger, who were worthy opponents!…

Today’s big public protests are all ‘whinemoms’ in silly hats, cheerily organizing bus drop-offs and handing out water bottles and snack bags. No more transgressive than your average suburban soccer practice, except the under-18s swarming these modern protests have no respect for their expensively-educated elders.

Obviously, this is all Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi’s fault.

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Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: Be Best, Baltimore!

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… Trump was addressing students at the B’More Youth Summit on Opioid Awareness at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). The event was part of her “Be Best” initiative on issues affecting children, including bullying and the dangers of opioid use…

The first lady was met with boos when she walked onstage after her introduction. The audience remained noisy through most of her five-minute speech.

She was once again booed loudly when she finished her speech and walked offstage, according to reporters at the event and a live video (around the 5:30 mark)…

President Donald Trump came under fire earlier this year for a racist tirade against Baltimore in which he called it “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.”

He also criticized Rep. Elijah Cummings, who represented a large portion of the city prior to his death last month. This prompted the Baltimore Sun editorial board to refer to the president as “vermin” in a scorching editorial…

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Late Night Schadenfreude / Rumormonging Open Thread – Walter Reed Edition

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“Oh, like sitting on the can for an hour or so furiously texting isn’t work?”

I personally subscribe to the theory that, after a bad news week, the Oval Office Occupant had a massive panic attack, complete with chest pain and shortness of breath. But since he’s a uniquely powerful fat old man — and since another 20202 candidate recently suffered ‘chest discomfort’ that turned out to be an actual myocardial infarction — he got hauled off to Walter Reed ASAP, just in case. Didn’t wanna gloat too soon last night, but since there’s no been no honest updates…

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G7 Open Thread: Good News (If We Can Keep Him to It)

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More immediately:

If you’re in a paranoid mood (remember, even paranoids have real enemies!): It has been widely assumed that Trump’s ‘special guest nation’ at this G7 would be… Russia. What price a scenario where Putin rejects his puppet’s down-at-heels hotel, and tells him he’d prefer to introduce his own ‘security arrangements’ at Camp David?

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PSA Open Thread: Must-*Not*-Watch Video

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Over the weekend, those second-tier benchwarmers not required to fluff His Lardship during his hatefest trifecta got together (at a Trump property, of course!) to throw themselves a fan-fest. Complete with ‘volunteer’ videos, including a (possibly deliberately) amateurish parody of the Kingsman movie, showing Trump as a fit’n’focused James Bond character shooting up a church full of ‘media figures’. This — I know, you’re shocked — didn’t go over well with the media in question. (AMPFest has since disavowed the video, FWIW.)

You’d think the Trumpsters would be a little more cautious, given present circumstances, about pissing off the already-getting-bored media figures required to facilitate their attempts to steal another election, but then: High-quality hires are not a Trump trademark.

***********
Much further down the political food chain, the Sanders campaign announced they’d be hiring independent video producer Matt Orfalea because his extremely enthusiastic pro-Bernie YouTube commercials were so viral. Unfortunately, outside researchers soon discovered ‘#Orf’ had also produced a wealth of deeply cringeworthy material, including a 2-minute ‘parody’ clip-cut entitled ‘MLK: I Have A Wet Dream’. Which I am not linking, not even to one of the many tweets decrying it, because it is every bit as disgusting as you’d imagine, or worse. (Public obscenity standards have relaxed a lot since the days when Sanders was writing rape-fantasy ‘think pieces’ for his local newspaper.) When neither the ‘can’t you people take a joke’ or the ‘when I was young and irresponsible… ‘ defenses defused the critics, the campaign hastily un-hired Orfalea. So, if the Sandernistas are lucky (and can keep from relitigating it all over social media), this glitch in the primary matrix will go unnoticed beyond the obscure realms of the Politically Engaged Online.

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Gun Safety PSA: Back to School Essentials

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Trigger warning — this spot is almost too effective…

Seriously good work by the Sandy Hook Promise people — I learned about it from a spot on the local news, and I suspect it’s going viral on the airwaves as well as in social media.

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Late Night KKKlown Car Open Thread: The GOP Retreat (But Trump Found Them Anyway)

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Even though it meant not live-tweeting during the DNC’s Houston debate, where he was guaranteed a (considerably less flattering) large audience. Per the Washington Post:

… With the president speaking here Thursday to a closed-door retreat of House Republicans, scores of protesters gathered to express opposition to White House policies and outrage at Trump’s recent tweets calling Maryland’s largest city “the Worst in the USA.”

The visit by the president — who maligned Baltimore as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live” — was limited to a dinnertime speech kicking off the GOP retreat at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel in Harbor East.

House Republicans selected Baltimore as the location for their three-day conference long before the president’s attack on the city, where Democrats outnumber Republicans 10 to 1. Well before the White House announced that Trump would attend the conference, a coalition of advocacy groups calling themselves the Baltimore Welcoming Committee had planned days of rallies to protest GOP policies on immigration, climate change and other topics. There was to be a singalong, a light show and a dance party. Organizer Sharon Black said Trump’s scheduled appearance “upped the ante.”

“This is about the remarks about Baltimore and his policies. You can’t really separate the two,” she said…

Of course, Donny Dollhands goes nowhere without a few of his devoted sycophants…

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Happy Reminder Open Thread: #MoscowMitch Is *Very* Annoyed with Us

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As a good bidnizman, McConnell believes the #MoscowMitch label is damaging his personal brand. He’s for sale to any sufficiently wealthy buyer, not just the GRU! So he vented with Hugh ‘Ambulatory Cream Cheese Sculpture’* Hewitt:

… “It’s modern-day McCarthyism,” McConnell said during a radio interview on Salem Media Group’s “Hugh Hewitt Show” when asked about the nickname he received after blocking Democrats’ efforts to pass bipartisan election security bills…

McConnell faced heavy scrutiny following his decision in July to block requests from Democratic senators to pass bills aimed at strengthening America’s election infrastructure by unanimous consent.

The move came a day after former special counsel Robert Mueller publicly warned that Russia was trying to interfere in the 2020 elections as we “sit here.”…

“These pundits are lying, lying when they dismiss the work that has been done. They’re lying when they insist I have personally blocked actions which, in fact, I have championed and the Senate has passed. They are lying when they suggest that either party is against defending our democracy,” he said during the Senate floor speech.

The bills blocked by McConnell would require the use of paper ballots and direct campaigns to report offers of assistance from foreign governments to the FBI.

*h/t Betty Cracker

Alternative #hack, too also:

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Late Night Sad Trombone Open Thread: The Boston ‘Straight Pride’ Parade

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You know the ‘straight pride’ luzers have themselves an image problem when they choose a parade marshal whose profession is being gay, but right-wing. Sam Bishop’s twitter feed includes shots from the whole sad performance. Per the Boston Globe:

Outdone by numbers and noise from thousands of protesters, a few hundred marchers in a controversial Straight Pride Parade were jeered and heckled Saturday afternoon during a mile-long procession from Copley Square to City Hall Plaza.

“Shame on you!” many of the protesters yelled as the parade, flanked by hundreds of police officers, passed block after block of security barricades on normally busy downtown streets, which had been closed for the event.

After the rally ended at 4 p.m., some of the protesters turned their anger toward the mayor and police, whom they assailed for allowing the parade and then protecting the marchers…

Boston police reported 36 arrests, but spokesman Sergeant John Boyle gave no details. Four police officers suffered non-life-threatening injuries, he said.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh, who was attending a Jump Into Peace event in Roxbury, said the march “is not any representation of who we are as a city.”

About 600 protesters outnumbered an estimated 200 marchers after the parade reached City Hall Plaza, where police kept protesters behind barricades about 200 feet from a concert stage where the Straight Pride rally was held…

Parade organizer Mark Sahady is part of Resist Marxism, a group founded by an alt-right leader that has a history of violence. That group had helped organize a “free speech” rally in Boston in 2017 that critics said attracted white nationalists.

The grand marshal was Milo Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart editor who has been banned from Facebook and Twitter for hate speech, was among several speakers at the rally…

So Sahady and his little buddies succeeded in wasting a ton of the city’s money protecting them from the abuse they were demanding, and ramping up the tension another notch between the cops and the ‘counter-culture’. Which was what they were hoping for, after all, so at least they have *that* consolation.

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Naming & Shaming Open Thread: Even Trump’s Supporters Find the Association Embarrassing

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[Fanfare: Flugelhorns & Euphoniums]

Rep. Joaquin Castro — he’s the twin brother of Julian Castro — tweeted out a campaign add that featured a list including the names and occupations of people in his San Antonio congressional district who had given the legal maximum to the Trump re-election campaign in 2019 (This is of course public information, which anybody can look up, and I encourage you to do so).

Naturally this elicited shrieks of outrage from the Republican party establishment that simply publicizing the fact that people are in 2019 donating money to a white supremacist who inspires his followers to murder Hispanics like Castro himself was also a form of “inciting violence against private citizens” because [step in argument missing]….

If you are giving Trump money at this point you are a garbage person, who should be named, shamed, and shunned. I think it’s an excellent idea to publicize the names of people who are donating to Trump, in order to boycott their businesses, while exercising the core First Amendment right to let everyone know that Trump supporters are, individually and collectively, garbage people who should be ostracized by any and every decent human being…

But SERIOUSLY:

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