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Word salad with all caps

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This is how realignments happen…

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot

Gastritis Broke My Calculator

An army of rabid, anonymous commenters

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Consistently wrong since 2002

The Math Demands It!

Han shot first.

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I personally stopped the public option…

Just a few bad apples.

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This blog is Obama’s Katrina.

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Saturday Night PopCult Nostalgia Open Thread: CYBERTRUCK!

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Soundtrack for this post:

RIP my menchies, as the kids say, but this was too good *not* to share. Bryan Feldman, at NYMag, “We May Not Want the Cybertruck, But We Deserve It”:

… The Cybertruck is a truck that Elon Musk unveiled last night. It is a Humvee-ish vehicle that looks like it was made for a direct-to-video Starship Troopers ripoff called Spaceship Soldiers. It looks like a secret car you unlock if you get a high score on every Cruisin’ USA track. It looks like one of those first-pass shots on a visual-effects highlights reel from 1992. It looks like it has a physics system completely separate from every other object on this earth and if you hit a curb at the wrong angle, the truck will glitch out and clip through an entire city block, causing untold devastation. It is the Cybertruck.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “Ah, a Cybertruck. A truck that is computer-y.” Wrong! Cybertruck should be said in the exact same way that one might pronounce the word “cyberpunk,” a sci-fi genre all about how technology will completely ruin us once we start jamming chips into our brains. Just look at the Cybertruck logo. It’s not some coder font — it’s graffiti. It’s the Official Truck of App-Catalyzed Urban Decay. This a Blade Runner-ass truck for the end times. It is not a utopian, idealistic creation — and in that sense, it is refreshing. Elon Musk is not selling us the world we want; he is selling the world we have (starting at MSRP $39,900). The Cybertruck is, in a sense, practical. Everything about this truck screams, “This is the car you will drive through overgrown suburbs full of decaying houses, searching for potable water. This is the car the next three generations of your family will be born in the trunk of. When the feral wolves attack, this truck will protect you.”

But the truck will not protect you. In its unveiling last night, Musk tried to show off the vehicle’s “bulletproof” windows. He asked an employee to throw a rock at the window. The window fractured. They tried it again on a second window. That window also fractured. It was a pure, perfect distillation of what Elon Musk’s whole, like, deal is. He has spent years pouring his billions into projects that make science fiction into science fact, in order to sell people and governments expensive stuff that maybe half-functions. A demonstration of the dent-proof doors went off more successfully.

Many of Musk’s products are self-indulgent, but this might be the most self-indulgent. Like, you know how there are people who design their living rooms to look like the bridge of the Enterprise, or have rooms dedicated to baseball paraphernalia? The Cybertruck can then be read as Musk’s attempt to shape not just his own life, but the lives of others, to mimic the media of his youth. The whole thing resembles a low-poly model — a 3-D asset made of a limited number of polygons based on the limited computing power of older devices. Musk doesn’t just want a Cybertruck for himself, he wants to see thousands of Cybertrucks roaming the streets, sticking out like sore thumbs, parts of the world that quite literally haven’t fully rendered to the level of everything else around them. The notion might not be as far-fetched as it seems. Silicon Valley is full of newly minted millionaires with more money than they know what to do with. The Cybertruck looks very stupid, but so do AirPods…

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Snark Open Thread: The “President” Is Perfectly Fine!

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… … and furthermore I think my relationship with her receptionist may be permanently strained.
“Could you see me sooner if I just did half of it and then the other half later?” I asked, and the scheduler patiently began to explain that unfortunately this was not and had never been how physicals worked.

But just because my primary care physician was unaware that this was how things worked, that does not mean that Donald Trump is not aware. He just wanted to see half of what was wrong (nothing), and he will go back later when he has a free moment. He did the important half of the physical — the doctor banged his knee with the tiny hammer but did not check to see whether it made his leg kick, took his systolic but not his diastolic blood pressure, measured half his height, and discovered that he weighs just slightly over 120 pounds! That all seems great. The results are back, and half of him is 100 percent fine!…

Although when Hillary Clinton coughed, ever, it meant that she was at the brink of death (this is medical science; her humors were out of balance, and her womb was roving through her body), Donald Trump’s sudden decision to just go to visit a doctor and do half his annual physical is not cause for concern. His word is good. He has as many white blood cells as he had people at his inauguration, and his blood pressure is as low as his poll numbers aren’t. He would never lie to us about something important…

I am only half concerned.

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Late Night Open Thread: Once You Really Get to Know Him, Though…

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Late Night After Dark Open Thread: When Horseshoe Poles Touch

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“When the President does it, it is not a crime”:

Elsewhere…

And finally…

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Late Night Open Thread: Mystery Meal

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Pretty sure it’s a glazed scone — the kind of dessert offered to a ‘picky eater’ if they finish alllll their vegetables… or at least the tomatoes, and most of the stuffed pepper…

Another view:

I think that’s a fried egg, atop the disemboweled pepper? In which case, presumably the stuffing is vegetarian?

Chances Trump ate this, I’d bet, are somewhere between ‘nope’ and ‘now *I’ll* tell one’. To be fair, I wouldn’t be enticed by those wrinkly old cherry tomatoes & hardened egg, myself…

Also meal-related (but much more laudable!):


Those of you who grew up eating in school cafeterias, insert your own jokes below.

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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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“Bring Me the Head of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi”: Early Reviews, Not Promising

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Publicity-grab sequels seldom match the success of the originals. Title of this post from a Christopher Dickey article in the Daily Beast, “Trump Turns Baghdadi’s Killing Into a Reality Show”:

PARIS—President Donald J. Trump wants you to see his new movie: “Bring Me the Head of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”

At a special Sunday morning press conference in Washington D.C., Trump described the way U.S. Special Operations Forces attacked Baghdadi’s compound and killed him in such graphic and explicit detail that some intelligence professionals worried he may have revealed, again, too much about sources and methods.

But Trump knows great television when he sees it, and he was enthusiastic about the images he was watching from the White House situation room Saturday night. “It was absolutely perfect, as though you were watching a movie,” he said…

The reasons such a video of the 2011 Osama operation was not released are the same ones that the intelligence community will use to argue against dissemination of the Baghdadi death: because such images could compromise so much about the operation.

But quite apart from Trump’s worthy desire to undermine the messaging of the still virulent ISIS organization, there is also his unworthy inclination to gloat. Remember when Trump tweeted a highly classified high-resolution image of a failed Iranian missile launch earlier this year for little more reason, it would seem, that smug self-satisfaction?

Trump hates it when the fast-turning news cycle that he uses effectively to obscure his failings also works to push his accomplishments into oblivion…

He’ll be tweeting obscenities — not dirty words, but actual graphic images & descriptions — no later than tomorrow morning. And that’s only if the Fox News prime-time lineup lathers sufficient Kim-Jong-un – style propaganda all this evening.

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Open Thread: Oval Office Occupant Finds Some African-Americans to Speak Over

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Per the NYTimes, “In Criminal Justice Speech, Trump Belittles Obama’s Efforts for Black People”:

… Opening a three-day forum on criminal justice that will later feature his Democratic rivals, Mr. Trump promoted the bipartisan criminal justice overhaul he signed last year and invited to the stage several people who were released from prison as a result of the new law or his own commutation decisions.

Last year’s overhaul, the First Step Act, was an example of the power of bipartisanship, he said, praising the Republicans and Democrats who worked on it for their efforts “to restore hope and optimism where they’re really needed the most and where there was very little.”

But as his hourlong speech went on, his message of harmony gave way to his trademark partisan attacks on Democrats…

He recalled the 2016 speech in which he urged black voters to support him because “what the hell do you have to lose,” repeating the line multiple times and saying his administration had kept its promise to those voters.

And he described how his administration had helped historically black colleges and universities and suggested that voters “check out the last administration and see what they did for you.”

“Not too much,” he said…

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Friday Morning Open Thread: Scorpion Season

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New Scorpio moon Sunday, Selket protect us. Pluto and Mars will be in opposition, which means all the nastiest skeletons are due to fall out of closets, but since it’s a new moon it will take up to six months to resolve the ensuing crises. Then Mercury goes retrograde between Halloween and November 20th, which portends mechanical failures, missed opportunities, and gremlin activity on all fronts…

(In my defense, sports fans are notoriously superstitious.)

Per the Washington Post:

President Trump said Thursday that he plans to attend Game 5 of the World Series at Nationals Park on Sunday if the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros are still playing, though he will not throw the ceremonial first pitch.

“They’ve got to dress me up in a lot of heavy armor — I’ll look too heavy,” he responded when a reporter asked him about whether he would take the mound. Trump appeared to be making a reference to a bulletproof vest that presidents sometimes are required to wear by Secret Service when they are amid large crowds. A team official confirmed later that he will not take part in that on-field tradition.

Trump’s attendance at the 41,000-seat stadium in Southeast would mark a rare time he has ventured into the District’s entertainment and nightlife scene, other than his occasional visits to the Trump hotel a few blocks from the White House. It could also mean increased security restrictions at the ballpark for what is expected to be a capacity crowd.

The Nationals lead the Astros 2-0 in the best-of-seven series, with Game 3 scheduled for Friday night and Game 4 on Saturday, both in Washington. The Nationals would have to lose at least one of those games for there to be a Game 5 on Sunday…


 
Elsewhere:

Good news for Kai Kahele, at least: Gabbard just announced that she’s dropping her Senate House reelection campaign. So, once her new third-party grift fails to install her in the Oval Office, she and Nikki Haley will be able to devote all their attention to competing for gigs on the Wingnut Welfare circuit.

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The Doral Debacle Open Thread: “He’s in the Hospitality Business!”

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So Mick Mulvaney told us. And Trump certainly set out a rich buffet for his detractors…

… “He had no choice,” Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and longtime friend of the president’s, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “It shouldn’t have been done in the first place. And it’s a good move to get out of it and get that out of the papers and off the news.”

[And you know it just broke Christie’s heart to be called on to explain this for his old frenemy…]

The president first heard the criticism of his choice of the Doral watching TV, where even some Fox News personalities were disapproving. By Saturday afternoon, his concerns had deepened when he put in a call to Camp David, where Mr. Mulvaney was hosting moderate congressional Republicans for a discussion of issues facing them, including impeachment, and was told the consensus was he should reverse himself. Those moderates are among the votes Mr. Trump would need to stick with him during an impeachment.

“I didn’t see it being a big negative, but it certainly wasn’t a positive,” said Representative Peter T. King of New York, one of those at Camp David. He said the group told Mr. Trump’s aides that sticking with the decision “would be a distraction.”…

“I think there was a lot of concern,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a member of the Republicans’ leadership team. “I’m not sure people questioned the legality of it, but it clearly was an unforced political error.”

Mr. Cole said he did not speak to the president directly about it, but expressed relief that Mr. Trump had changed his mind, and was certain that other Republicans felt the same way. “We just didn’t need this,” he said.

By late Saturday afternoon, Mr. Trump had made his decision, but he waited to announce the reversal until that night in two tweets that were separated by a break he took to watch the opening of Jeanine Pirro’s Fox News program…

[Because a guy needs a little ego balm when he’s facing such a hurtful choice.]

“At the end of the day,” Mr. Mulvaney said Sunday, “he still considers himself to be in the hospitality business, and he saw an opportunity to take the biggest leaders from around the world, and he wanted to put the absolute best show, the best visit that he possibly could.”

[A show, he most certainly put on, regardless.]

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Open Thread: Mike Pompeo, “Secretary of Swagger”

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has become increasingly frustrated in recent weeks by the departure of top State Department officials and claims that he failed to defend the former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, from a smear campaign against her, according to three sources familiar with the situation.

As part of the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, Yovanovitch testified to Congress this week that she was unfairly removed based on false claims pushed by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

One of the sources tell CNN that Pompeo was alerted to internal and external concerns about Giuliani’s effort to push out Yovanovitch, but Pompeo failed to act — he was wary of getting too deeply involved over fears of derailing US-Ukraine policy and potentially sharing the fate of his former colleague John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser who was fired for not being aligned with the President…

Pompeo’s apparent choice not to put guardrails between State officials and Giuliani has come under scrutiny by House Democrats who are bent on learning as much as they can about what exactly Pompeo knew of Giuliani’s dealings. In recent interviews, Pompeo has declined to answer questions about Giuliani’s entanglement in the administration’s Ukraine policy.

He was however aware of it. In March, Pompeo received a packet from Giuliani containing unfounded claims about Yovanovitch, as well as former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter regarding their dealings in Ukraine…

As the State Department has stopped working with Congress due to orders from the White House, Pompeo himself continues to defend Trump. He has called the Ukraine impeachment inquiry a conspiracy theory to take down the President.

But there will be new questions about conversations regarding quid pro quo in the coming days given the pronouncement by acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney in a news conference Thursday that the US withheld military aid from Ukraine in hopes of securing a promise that the foreign government would look into the possible presence of the physical Democratic National Committee server hacked by the Russians in 2016.

Pompeo, whose department oversees a hefty amount of that assistance to Ukraine, was also asked last month if it would be a problem if there were a quid pro quo arrangement. Pompeo said it is his job to be sure that foreign assistance is “completely appropriate” and that “American taxpayer dollars are used appropriately.”

IMO, “All better now!” should *definitely* be added to the rotating tags list.

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Sunday Evening Punchdrunk Politics Open Thread

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Could be worse, we could be Republicans.

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Saturday Afternoon Open Thread: Problematic!

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Mock, if you must, but admit it. This promo is just about pitch-perfect for Buttigieg’s presumable donor base: College-educated, diversity-friendly midwesterners who read the Arts & Leisure section.

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Late Night Open Thread: Ben Shapiro Mode

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“It was an offer she could, in fact, refuse.”

Ben Shapiro is a professional Wingnut Wurlitzer pest who’s spent the past year whining that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won’t pay him any attention. Of course he never actually intended to ‘debate’ her, but his donors have generously supported his ongoing public grievance.

Guess Tulsi figures that her higher media profile gives her the ‘right’ to ‘challenge’ the OG wingnut boogey-woman her own self. Let’s see how much she scams on this new dogwhistle!

Alternatively:

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Friday Morning Open Thread: Thick Mick Mulvaney Knows What His President Likes

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… Pre-sorted Starbursts, free money, and the wholehearted defense of even his dumbest moves.

Problem is, the guy with this kind of single-minded dedication to Lord Smallgloves’ whims is not necessarily an intellectual heavyweight.

Everyone’s free to choose the name by which they’re known, but as I have been pointing out for some time, Mick is generally not the cognomen of someone renowned for his wisdom.

Voiceover: Later, that same day…

SRSLY?

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