Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

No one could have predicted…

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

It was down to kool-aid drinkers and next of kin at the trump White House

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Tick tock motherfuckers! Tick fucking tock!

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

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

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Just a few bad apples.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Let there be snark.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

This fight is for everything.

False Scribes! False Scribes!

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot.

I’m only here for the duck photos.

We still have time to mess this up!

This is all too absurd to be reality, right?

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Back to the Grind

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Rich autocrats bought out the Republican party (years ago) because its utility was obvious to them: For surprising nominal sums, they could increase their own agency and decrease their tax burden. We Democrats don’t have that kind of transparent pay-for-play benefit to offer — and if we somehow found one, we’d probably no longer be Democrats. All we have is hard work, and the knowledge that we’re on the right side of history!

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Glory Days

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Apparently, and regrettably, David Lee Roth has started a residency at Las Vegas, and for some absurd amount of money, you too can witness the spectacle of an elderly man in ill fitting clothes and obvious frontal lobe damage stiffly strutting around stage. I suppose that yes, it is still David Lee Roth, but it’s not the David Lee Roth you remember or want to remember. It’s an obscene caricature of David Lee Roth- long in the tooth, without voice or authority, cheapened by wear and tear and misuse, and ready to collapse at any moment. It’s enough to make you wonder if it was always this bad as you unfortunately glimpse his sagging ass betrayed by skin tight attire that should, at the very least, provide the bare minimum of architectural support.

It does not.

***

That’s basically how I feel about the state of our democracy heading into the impeachment. I spent a little bit of time watching the news shows this weekend- only a little, as I, too, am aging, and life is too short for this shit. I watched people on my tv put on their serious voices as they explain what a big and momentous deal this is- “JUST THE THIRD TIME IN HISTORY,” you know! The gravity of the situation never takes hold, though, because I remember the same serious voices talking about Hillary’s emails, or how Obama really screwed up by saying it was wrong for Henry Louis Gates to get fucked with by cops on his own god damned couch, or how the tea party really cared about the deficit or Iraq really did have WMD. It’s all a fucking show that no one wants to go to, we all know the ending, and we’re not going to get our money’s worth.

Donald Trump has been impeached. He did everything and more for which he was impeached. Everyone knows he is guilty, even his most ardent supporters in the jury pool, there will be a show trial, and he will be acquitted. And then Republicans will get back to the very serious business of rigging elections, pitting Americans against each other, wiping up what remains of our institutions and packing the courts, and the always popular looting of the treasury.

This is not to say Democrats will not try. I am sure they will. They will fight, they will make a clear case, they will plead for sanity from clearly insane and evil people like Susan Collins, and then they will lose. We can applaud them for their attempt to do the right thing, but it is important to remember the one thing that no one seems to care about when shouting “Remember the Alamo!” The good guys lost and all got killed.

***

When it is all over with, the serious voices on your tv will tell you what to think, and we’ll head into another election where we can focus on important issues like “Does Elizabeth Warren have native American blood” and “what they are really saying over corned beef hash in a former Kentucky mining town.” We’ll soon get distracted by something shiny, and meanwhile our hobbled democracy will pick up the microphone and start half singing:

“Oh, baby baby
Won’t-cha turn your head my way?”

Glory DaysPost + Comments (143)

Friday Morning Open Thread: Is There Such A Thing As A ‘BS Storm Emergency Day’?

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Snow Storm Emergency Kit - Stone Soup

(Stone Soup via GoComics.com)

 
We’re only three days into the new year. There’s people still on their year-end break, for Murphy’s sake!

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T-12: The House Impeachment Hearings Begin Tomorrow AM, Here’s What to Expect

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We are just under 24 hours out from the first of the publicly facing House impeachment hearings. The first hearing begins tomorrow at 10:00 AM EST and if we have a functional blog, I’ll have a live feed up for you all.

Tomorrow’s hearings are Ambassador William Taylor, the Acting US Ambassador to Ukraine, at 10:00 AM and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs in the afternoon. The next day of public hearings will be Friday when Ambassador Yovanavitch, the former US Ambassador to Ukraine will be testifying.

Next week’s schedule was released earlier today.

The procedure for these hearings will be that the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Congressman Schiff, and the ranking member, Congressman Nunes, will each make an opening statement. Each session’s witness will then be given a chance to make an opening statement if they so desire. Questioning will begin with a forty-five minute round of questioning for the committee chair and ranking member, rather than the 5 minute rounds we’ve become accustomed to over the past several years. It has already announced that Congressman Schiff’s time will be taken by the majority (Committee) counsel, Dan Goldman, a former Federal prosecutor and former NBC/MSNBC legal analyst who was specifically hired by Congressman Schiff back in February to oversee this investigation. It is not clear yet whether Congressman Nunes will do the questioning himself, have his counsel conduct the questioning, or some combination thereof. It is important to remember that Congressman Schiff is, himself, a former Federal prosecutor and one of the few who has successfully prosecuted a case involving a US official engaged in spying for a hostile foreign power. Goldman was involved in very high profile prosecutions of Genovese crime organization members. Congressman Nunes has a degree in agriculture, states his occupation as farmer, but his family farm is now in Iowa, not in his congressional district in California. So expect more of the conspiracy theory laundering that Congressman Nunes has been doing throughout the closed door depositions when he could be bothered to actually show up to them.

After that, the questioning will devolve back to the alternating five minute blocks of questioning for each of the remaining Democratic and Republican members of the committee. I fully expect that the Republican members, like they do for every hearing, will have a coordinated a list of questions intended to derail and sidetrack the hearings into conspiracy theory territory so they can launder their misinformation, disinformation, and agitprop through the hearings. And since Congressman Jordan (R-Men’s Showers) has been temporarily placed on the committee so he can do his jacket off, sleeves rolled up, rapid fire, staccato badgering of witnesses, I fully expect a lot of the Republican questioning time will be yielded back to him so he can badger at will as we’ve seen in House Oversight Committee hearings earlier this year. The Democratic members of the committee, unlike their Republican counterparts, are largely former Federal and state prosecutors, law enforcement officers, and staff judge advocates in the US military so their questions will at least be on topic and germane even if they’re not coordinated. And they really should be coordinated, but I’m not counting on that type of message discipline in strategic communication.

Congressman Schiff has established the rules so that all of the various points of order and personal privilege and parliamentary procedure will be dealt with at the end of each hearing day to avoid the Republican members of the committee from grinding the hearing to a halt for up to an hour as soon as it begins as they’ve done with other high profile televised hearings over the past 10 months.

I have no idea what time the ritual bodily ejection of Congressman Gaetz (R-DUI) from the committee chambers is scheduled for. You’ll just have to watch the whole thing. Personally, I’m hoping Congressman Schiff has a Gaetz sized trebuchet installed so they can really go for distance! (that was sarcasm, lest anyone think I’m advocating for violence against Congressman Gaetz).

Expect a lot of what we already know from the now released deposition transcripts to be publicly confirmed. Expect the committee Republicans, their staff, and Congressman Gaetz to be disruptive and try to turn the hearings into a circus. And, provided the blog is actually up, running, and functioning with the change over to the new site, expect that I’ll have a live stream of the proceedings up as soon as I can get access.

Open thread.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: Must Be Autumn, Already

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: Must Be Autumn, AlreadyPost + Comments (255)

The Enemy Of My Enemy?

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So this is actually happening:

Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) officially announced his 2020 campaign to challenge President Donald Trump on Sunday morning.

…

Walsh, an outspoken Trump critic, confirmed that he had.

“I’m going to run for president, and I’m happy to be on your show announcing my candidacy,” Walsh told Stephanopoulos. “George, no surprise, we’ve got a guy in the White House who’s unfit, completely unfit, to be president.”

On one hand, anything that discomfits Hair Führer is fine by me, and certainly Walsh has the nasty mouth and all-round asshole gene to piss off RumpleTrumpskin plenty.  Not to mention I appreciate these jabs at his former GOP colleagues:

“And it stuns me that nobody’s stepped up, nobody in the Republican party’s stepped up,” he continued.

Walsh claimed that “everybody” in the GOP “believes [Trump’s] unfit” for office.

But aside from that, he’s a deadbeat dad slime ball with genuinely shitty politics.

On balance, though, I love it. Walsh can’t win the primary, but he can bring some extra heat, and that’s good for both political and entertainment reasons.  If by some meteor strike he did win, the combo platter of enraged Trump die-hards and the general decline in the GOP brand makes him odds against for the big prize.

And yeah, I know that Trump was too — but Walsh doesn’t have what the shitgibbon did: both a complacent media and, before assuming office, a weightless populist appeal.

But enough of that: I repeat rule 1 — Walsh ain’t going to win. And still Trump will be hugely pissed. And that’s both good and fun for us.

This thread: open as Emma Lazarus would have had the door to this U.S. of A.

Image: Vicenzo Camucchini, The Assassination of Julius Caesar, betw. 1804 and 1805.

The Enemy Of My Enemy?Post + Comments (159)

Not Safe For Work Delivery: Floriduh! Man Edition

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What did BettyC know and when did she know it?

The Pensacola News Journal has all the details:

Escambia County Commissioner Doug Underhill is fuming after a box labeled “industrial strength dildos” arrived in the mail at his county office Thursday.

Underhill showed the box to reporters following the County Commission meeting on Thursday, saying it demonstrated how far the level of civility has fallen in Escambia County.

“There’s no way this is even remotely appropriate in the way that we conduct business here in Escambia County,” Underhill said while pointing to the box. “We have staff members, young people, who have to handle the mail here. I’m a sailor, you’re not going to offend me with anything, but this kind of garbage, and this is the kind of garbage put out by the same kinds of people, the same lies, the same hate, the same anger that they bring to every single issue.”

The box itself appeared to be a practical joke box and was only filled with paper and a packing slip billing for the package that included the email address of the sender.

The email address belongs to a Perdido Key resident named Scott Anderson, who told the News Journal he had no idea about the box being sent to Underhill or how his email address ended up on the packing slip.

“I’m totally stunned by all of this,” Anderson said.

Anderson said he’s only interacted with Underhill a few times on the Nextdoor website over what he said was a lack of maintenance at the Perdido Key Dog Park.

“I suppose I could’ve irritated maybe an Underhill supporter,” Anderson said. “That’s the only thing I can think of.”

Despite the box appearing to be a joke, it was no laughing matter for Underhill.

Underhill regularly comments in local Facebook groups and often takes a combative tone with people with whom he disagrees.

Underhill said laughing at the antics of his dedicated critics only makes it worse because the time and energy spent on dealing with his critics is time not spent tackling issues that matter such as funding for public safety.

Underhill pointed to the meeting on Thursday as an example. On Thursday, members of Save Pensacola Beach protesting the county’s move to remove language approved by voters last year in a non-binding referendum.

During the discussion, Underhill said he compared the group and its founder Dianne Krummel to antifa, short for anti-facists, the name given to far-left protestors who often wear masks and engage in violent attacks during protest.

“Dianne, at some point you’re going to have to trade in that yellow shirt for a black mask if you keep this up,” Underhill said.

While speaking to reporters, Underhill blamed the press for feeding what he said was “radical activism” of the group and argued that the County Commission chambers should be a place of civil discussion.

When asked if his own speech, especially online, was uncivil, Underhill rejected the idea.

“I don’t think I’m uncivil online at all,” Underhill said. “I engage the adversary. The adversary is the lies, the untruths. The reality is if we as your — especially as conservative elected officials — do not push back against the spending, if we don’t push back against the corruption, if we don’t push back against the lies that are said here, then who will?”

He seems nice.

No word on when the lube is scheduled to be delivered.

Also, The Industrial Strength Dildos are my New Wave Fem Punk cover band.

Open thread!

 

Not Safe For Work Delivery: Floriduh! Man EditionPost + Comments (87)