Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Shock troops for the Unitarian Jihad.

Militantly superior in their own minds…

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

Almost as fun as hiking the Appalachian Trail.

We Survived Breitbartpocalypse!

The Math Demands It!

How has Obama failed you today?

This is how realignments happen…

Naturally gregarious and alpha

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

What fresh hell is this?

We still have time to mess this up!

Mission Accomplished!

Usually wrong but never in doubt.

I showered with Rahm and all I got was this shitty blog.

The revolution will be supervised.

Han shot first.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

I can see Russia from this blog!

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

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Late Night Open Thread: Au Revoir, Little Red Sparrow

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One day you’re the NRA’s top pin-up girl, the next you’re (allegedly) fighting for food in an American prison:

… Eagerly anticipating Butina’s impending liberation, Russian state media outlets expected to live-stream her release, but U.S. authorities had other plans. Having traveled to the Tallahassee Federal Correctional Institution from Atlanta, Georgia and Jacksonville, Florida, Russian state TV stringers were stranded for hours filming traffic, building exits and geese on the lawn. Meanwhile, Butina was quietly whisked out of the facility and transferred to the custody of ICE for a speedy deportation back to Russia…

Appearing on 60 Minutes—the most popular news talk show in Russia—the correspondent of Russia’s state-TV channel Rossiya-24 Valentin Bogdanov pointed out that the Western media no longer dares to call Butina a spy. “They’re being careful,” Bogdanov said, speculating that media outlets are afraid of being sued for using the wrong language. In the Kremlin-controlled Russian media, Butina is being described mainly in glowing terms…

Working at the direction of a Russian government official, Alexander Torshin, Butina infiltrated Republican political circles and the National Rifle Association around the time of the 2016 election in order to promote Russian interests. In September of 2019, an investigation by Senate Democrats determined that the NRA has acted as a “foreign asset” in providing Russian officials access to US political organizations.

In court documents, prosecutors argued that Butina’s efforts had the hallmarks of a Russian espionage operation, suggesting that she was acting as a “spotter” by identifying people who have the ability to influence policy in Russia’s favor, as a set of targets Russian spies could potentially cultivate. Investigators from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team questioned Butina on only one occasion for approximately an hour. Her name was left out of the final version of the Special Counsel’s redacted report. Many questions about the full scope of Maria Butina’s activities in the United States remain unanswered…

There is little doubt that Maria Butina will be actively used by Russian state media for anti-American propaganda. Butina also has other plans. In April, she told CNN that she might start tutoring Russian students who want to study in America.

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Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: Meanwhile, at the Other Pole of the Horseshoe…

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The Trump administration is doing what it does, but on steroids. Meanwhile, the Too-Woke-To-Settle-For-A-Mere-Imperfect-Democrat “Left” is… acting out that Nietzsche quote. “… When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

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Late Night Open Thread: Good for Luke Skywalker

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The whistleblower’s under federal protection because of rabid MAGAts, but Daddy’s Liddle’ Pwincess wants the world to know how very normal’n’basic her life is…

Gotta agree, I personally can’t wait until Jarvanka and all their adult kin are in prison or in exile, may the Goddess of Consequences permit.

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Industrial clusters and thick labor markets

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I’m waiting for a huge piece of code to rerun and I should not be working on a cognitively intensive revise and resubmit on a Friday afternoon, so I want to go back to what I originally went to grad school for — urban economics and economic development — for a minute to respond to a seemingly populist and really dumb proposal to strip the federal government of expertise proposed by Andrew Yang.

Let’s think about Washington DC’s primary export industry as government and more specifically federal government leadership and top level analysis and management. The federal government is an industrial cluster in DC much like venture capital fueled technology firms are an industrial cluster in San Francisco-San Jose region, bio-tech is a cluster in Greater Boston and steel was a cluster in Pittsburgh. Clusters are interesting in that they are often positive feedback loops until they run into hard constraints or a massive external shock.

There is a huge literature on the positive feedback loops on economically successful clusters. One of the major drivers is that a cluster creates a rich and thick labor market. This means that at any given point, there are lots of good jobs available to anyone who is qualified to work in the cluster. People aren’t locked into a “good enough” job because that is the only job available that utilizes any specific human capital/education/tacit knowledge available to them, but that people can readily shift between positions to maximize their personal gain. In Washington DC, if someone is a research economist, there are a hundred opportunities within seven Metro stops of their current place of employment. If someone is a research economist in Sault Ste. Marie, there may be one or two within an hour of their current place of employment. The same applies for geneticists who work in Boston vs. geneticists who work in Boise.

Employment concentration creates specialization and optimization. It allows for work to be more productive as the cluster grows and the labor market becomes even thicker and deeper. This is all pretty standard.

There is another labor market point to make; large urban areas have lots of jobs that are not in the primary export industry. This could matter for me at some point in the future as I could easily see myself spending a couple of years working for either the federal government in the DC-Baltimore region or working for an entity that directly services the federal management and analysis industrial cluster. My wife has a skill set that could translate into this industrial sector but her current experience is in a general professional environment. If my options for moving to DC for federal work or Boone, North Carolina, my wife will far more readily find a good enough job in DC.

Dispersing the vast majority of the DC/Baltimore/NOVA government management and analysis cluster that has been built up over four generations is a great way to make the federal government less efficient and less attractive to top tier talent especially if the dispersion would be going to smaller urban clusters with far shallower and thinner labor markets.

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Repub-on-Repub Open Thread: Speaking of DISARRAY!!!…

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… This weekend, a few dozen once-prominent GOP foreign policy figures, including some original “never Trumpers,” are gathering at a private Reagan Institute retreat in Beaver Creek, Colo., to promote and preserve the 40th president’s “conservative internationalist” approach to foreign affairs. Yet the White House has shown little willingness to tap into this wellspring of expertise, even as Trump cycles through national security aides and faces a dwindling pool of experienced staffers for a potential second term.

The ostracizing of the group has led some to reconsider their roles in a prominent public movement to stop Trump three years ago.

“I’m not comfortable with letters anymore,” said Patrick Cronin, head of the Asia-Pacific security program at the Hudson Institute, who signed the first letter, which called Trump “fundamentally dishonest” and “utterly unfitted to the office.” In March 2017, Cronin was forced to withdraw from a new position overseeing a Pentagon think tank after Trump allies blasted his appointment by then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis…

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Both Sides From The New York Times

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My Twitter lit up this morning with Bret Stephens’s call to sink Iran’s navy. But nobody wants war, he assures us.

Right next door (figuratively speaking), Eliot Higgins has an excellent explainer on the evidence proffered so far and how to analyze it. If you want to learn more about how to do open-source intelligence, take some time with this article.

Stephens’s piece, of course, offers nothing remotely like evidence.

And the Times Editorial Board advises the President to heed his deal-making reflex, not his hawkish advisers.

I guess two out of three isn’t too bad.

Open thread – slow afternoon.

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Cohen Testimony Open Thread: Breakout ‘Stars’

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I’m putting together a tweet-narrative on some of the GOP sideshow artistes who particularly beclowned themselves today, but first, strong supporting character noms for two of today’s partipants.

Steve Lynch (D-Southie) has not always endeared himself to the rest of us Masshole Dems, but he deserves credit for this:


Who is Jody Hice?


 
On the opposite end of the vertebrate spectrum, do *not* overlook Clay Higgins:

Moron, or miscreant? Why not both?

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Global Warming – The Message Is Getting Through

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The New York Times reports on a new poll.

A record number of Americans understand that climate change is real, according to a new survey, and they are increasingly worried about its effects in their lives today.

Two important takeaways:

First, the results themselves. “I’ve never seen jumps in some of the key indicators like this,” one of the investigators said.

Second, the Times saw no need to “balance” the results with a statement from a self-identified scientist living in his mother’s basement. Further, they used the word “understand” four times to describe the respondents’ relationship to the facts of global warming.

Real progress.

And open thread.

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Mueller’s Office Speaks

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This could mean almost anything. But it looks like something is seriously wrong with the BuzzFeed report.

I don’t think there’s enough there to speculate on specifics, but I’m sure others will.

And open thread!

 

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Criminal Abuse Open Thread: Ready Player Individual-1

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Balloon Juice commentor Waldo:

What prosecutors say: The president was in on it.
What Trump hears: The president was innocent.

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Dirty White Boys

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The problem-makers caucus sure wants some dumb stuff:

Another major criticism of the Problem Solvers’ proposed changes, coming from both liberal commentators and fellow Democratic representatives, is that they amount to a sort of unilateral disarmament. Republican leadership ran a partisan House of Representatives for eight years, and now, the minute Democrats get control, some of them want to dilute the strength of Democratic leadership and link legislative arms with Republican moderates instead? […]

I wonder why: [warning Intercept link]

The caucus was born out of meetings of congresspeople organized by No Labels, which was founded in 2010 as a bipartisan group, backed by wealthy donors, ostensibly dedicated to civility and good government. Nancy Jacobson, [Mark] Penn’s wife, is the No Labels CEO, and Penn is also closely involved with the group. Gottheimer was elected to Congress in 2016 and co-founded the caucus, with Rep. Tom Reed, D-N.Y., shortly thereafter.

If you want to barf up your breakfast, you can read Penn’s summer emission in the Hill, titled “To the middle, not the mattresses“.

The only audience for this white boy rebellion is corporate money and their shills like Penn.

(For the New Yorkers in the audience, the presence of Tom Reed kinda-sorta explains why otherwise reasonable Brian Higgins signed the letter. Higgins was one of the first to drop out as soon as Pelosi made a couple of nothingburger promises. The other explanation for Higgins acting like a dolt is the death of Louise Slaughter, who would have taken him to the woodshed for even thinking about signing the letter if she were still alive.)

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And Short Skirts Cause Rapes

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I haven’t been posting because the stupidity is just too much for me to bear, but wanted to pop my head out of my prairie dog hole to post this. My brother and I were texting yesterday about the MAGAbomber, and we were joking that Fox would soon be telling us how he’s the Democrat’s fault. I guess the Times beat them to the punch.

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Late Night Open Thread: Fare Thee Well, #Second Civil War… UNTIL…

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And we all had such hopes!…

There seem to have been multiple competing hashtags. Since I try to stay out of the fever swamps, Rick Wilson and his fellow NeverTrumpers have the nastier takes I’ve seen…

(Note: Don’t miss the kicker at the very end of this string!)

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Monday Morning Open Thread: The Profitable Stigmata of Palmer Comey

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After all, he has a book to sell…


 
Ed Kilgore, at NYMag:

… The belief that Clinton couldn’t lose is the only way to make sense of what a lot of people said and did in October 2016. But most of them did not have as much power to derail her campaign as Comey.

Polls are usually blamed for the illusion of Clinton’s invulnerability. But for the most part, they weren’t that far off track, particularly if you recall that she won the popular vote by more than 2 percent, and prescient observers noted before the election that Trump was in striking distance based on the polls.…

Perhaps all the pollsters and prognosticators who guessed wrong about 2016 are complicit in fostering the overconfidence of the Clinton campaign, Democratic voters — and yes — even James Comey. Certainly the big national news organizations whose coverage decisions reflected an apparent belief that the victorious Clinton could safely be taken down a few pegs over the email “story” have a lot to answer for. But in the end it was probably the difficulty of envisioning a President Trump that fed the overconfidence about Clinton most of all. It couldn’t happen here, until it did. And Comey is just one of the players in the political game who must now regret their lack of imagination. His mistake, however, had far bigger consequences than most.

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Sunday Evening Open Thread: BET’s SotU Rebuttal

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No disrespect to my homeboy Joe Kennedy III, but some people seem to be gleeful that “Auntie Maxine” will give her own response to Trump on Tuesday. Per the Bustle:

While Rep. Joe Kennedy will be giving the official Democratic State of the Union response, frequent Trump critic Waters will be giving her own statement on BET immediately following Trump’s speech. She’ll be joining Angela Rye’s State of the Union, along with several other activists and public officials. BET has announced that the show will air quarterly and will discuss the most important issues facing black people in America.

“Queen Maxine is going to hit the facts quick, she’s going to do it as only she can, but we’re not going to linger over his nonsense,” Rye, a political commentator/analyst and CEO of IMPACT Strategies, told The Root in an interview. Rye said the Tuesday evening show will focus on what Trump’s first year has meant for black Americans…

This assumes, of course, that Lord Smallgloves can be coaxed or intimidated into showing up live, and that he doesn’t cap his “speech” by setting fire to the podium or his own hair.

No matter what you personally think of Rep. Waters’ skills, take heart: She will be less ridiculous than the Tea Party responses to President Obama’s SotU, because more ridiculous than those people one cannot be. And watching the ensuing attacks from both the right and the alt-left should be entertaining, because that lady will brush a dude aside with sufficient force to severely bruise his public status.

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Are we gonna live-blog Tuesday’s Big Event? On the one hand, rubbernecking the inevitable disaster; on the other, do we want to run up Donny Dollhand’s viewing stats, which he’ll pay more attention to than he does to even the most positive/negative reviews of his actual performance?

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