Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot.

There’s some extremely good trouble headed their way.

Trump is going to draw a dick on that dog with a sharpie, isn’t he?

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

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

What fresh hell is this?

Let there be snark.

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

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Good luck with your asparagus.

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

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

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

This is all too absurd to be reality, right?

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Fuck if i know. i just get yelled at when i try it.

False Scribes! Falso Scribes!

I personally stopped the public option…

Shocking, but not surprising

Dinky Hocker shoots smack!

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

Shock troops for the Unitarian Jihad.

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Captain Courageous (Largely Outsourced To Mr. Pierce)

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Charles Pierce said it all about what Trump and his acting (of course) Navy Secretary did to the captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

The Roosevelt, you’ll recall is the aircraft carrier that suffered a coronavirus outbreak while on deployment. It is essentially impossible able to isolate infectious patients on naval vessel.  US carriers are huge–the Roosevelt is 335 meters long (inevitably: more than three football fields), but it’s full of stuff, and there’s not actually that much space to put people, especially folks who need to be kept well away from everyone else.

Its captain, Brett Crozier, asked, then begged his superiors for permission to get the sick sailors off his ship, and to quarantine the carrier for the time necessary to ensure that the infection would not sweep through his whole crew, inevitably killing some of them.

Captain Courageous (Largely Outsourced To Mr. Pierce

Pierce quotes the letter Crozier wrote to command:

This will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do. We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our Sailors…Removing the majority of personnel from a deployed U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier and isolating them for two weeks may seem like an extraordinary measure…This is a necessary risk. Keeping over 4,000 young men and women on board the TR is an unnecessary risk and breaks faith with those Sailors entrusted to our care.

Nothing happened until Crozier’s letter leaked to The San Francisco Chronicle. (It’s not now and may never be known who leaked it; possibly Crozier himself.) Once that letter became public, two things followed. As Pierce writes,

Almost immediately, acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly acted like any acting secretary of anything in this administration* can be expected to act. He initially refused Crozier’s request and then, when the public heat came down, he allowed the afflicted member of the crew to be brought ashore. Then, on Thursday, he relieved Crozier of his command.

Modly’s explanation is a masterpiece of Trumpian malign weaselry:

Captain Crozier had allowed the complexity of his challenge with COVID breakout on the ship to overwhelm his ability to act professionally…(Pierce’s emphasis.)

There’s not much to add. Adam and others on this blob more closely connected to the military than me can chime in, but I’m quite sure that there is no way Crozier didn’t understand what would follow from his decision to protect his crew.  A career on the fast track to flag rank is now dead.

Crozier is the kind of leader I would want if  I or anyone I cared about had to go into harm’s way.  His subordinates agree.

Donald Trump does not:

A Navy commander’s written alarms about a coronavirus outbreak aboard his aircraft carrier “looked terrible,” President Donald Trump said Saturday, as he praised military leaders who removed the USS Theodore Roosevelt’s top officer from his post.

A) I hope that military voters take note.  And B):  That Trump and his criminal, and criminally incompetent administration have made a ritual sacrifice of Captain Crozier is not just an act of petty and petulant vengeance.  It measurably weakens US national defense.

We cannot rid ourselves of these malignancies a moment too soon.

Image: J. W. M. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838.

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What a Day It Was

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I really hate to concentrate on Trump, but let’s just tally up his day yesterday.

In Dayton, no press were allowed in the hospital, but that didn’t stop the Trumpers from creating a campaign ad style video that the stablest genius tweeted out today. He also lied about Sherrod Brown and Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley’s comments on his visit to the hospital (he said they criticized him, when they actually said it was nice that he had comforted victims).

When Trump went to El Paso yesterday, none of the victims who were still hospitalized met with him, and when he met the staff, this happened:

This guy just keeps getting worse.

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Moscow Mitch Is Still A Class Act

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If I were advising McGrath I’d say that any tweet that mentions Mitch without calling him “Moscow Mitch” is a missed opportunity. That nickname clearly gets under his skin, so we should keep using it.

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As Close to Nothing As Humanly Possible

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Andrew Cuomo, who campaigned on legalizing marijuana, couldn’t get it done with a majority Democratic legislature (for the first time in a long time). Instead, we get a tepid glass of Cuomo-aide:

The new law will reduce the penalty for unlawful possession of marijuana to a violation punishable by fine, and remove criminal penalties for possession of any amount of marijuana under two ounces.

And why didn’t this year’s effort pass? Fucking Cuomo wanted a slush fund:

According to the Times, some progressive legislators want to commit marijuana revenue to communities that have been most negatively impacted by the war on drugs. But Cuomo has resisted those proposals, instead favoring legislative language that would give the executive branch — and the governor — more control over what to do with cannabis revenue.

On the bright side, after Cuomo was primaried by Cynthia Nixon, we aren’t hearing any more discussion about a run for President–hell, he’s about the only white male Democrat who isn’t running. I guess we have to take our satisfaction in the little things when it comes to this useless asshole, because he sure can’t deliver anything big.

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Schaden, meet Freude

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Everything the Shitgibbon touches turns to…well, merde:

Late last year, in a Miami conference room, a consultant for President Trump’s company said business at his prized 643-room Doral resort was in sharp decline.

At Doral, which Trump has listed in federal disclosures as his biggest moneymaker hotel, room rates, banquets, golf and overall revenue were all down since 2015. In two years, the resort’s net operating income — a key figure, representing the amount left over after expenses are paid — had fallen by 69 percent.

But what about that Trump economic boom? Alas:

Even in a vigorous economy, the property was missing the Trump Organization’s internal business targets; for instance, the club expected to take in $85 million in revenue in 2017 but took in just $75 million.

And what could be the reason that a venerable, once-much-admired, landmark property would do so poorly?

“They are severely underperforming” other resorts in the area, tax consultant Jessica Vachiratevanurak told a Miami-Dade County official in a bid to lower the property’s tax bill. The reason, she said: “There is some negative connotation that is associated with the brand.”

I have never met Ms. Vachiratevarunak, but I already admire her greatly. That last line? Olympic-level shade.

The WaPo article linked above is full of similar delights:

On one recent weekday in Miami, the JW Marriott Miami Turnberry Resort and Spa — a top competitor of Doral’s — was bustling with families eating dinner and children playing in the pool.

A few miles away, Trump’s Doral was shining, spotless and heavily branded. The Trump name was on chocolate bars ($5) and shot glasses ($10), and even on the paper inserts at the bottom of the bathroom wastebaskets.

But it was also much quieter.

Carl Goldstein — a retired butcher, visiting as part of a Passover tour group — had the lobby almost to himself.

It turns out that racism and viciousness drive away sponsors and guests? Whodathunkit?

TL:DR Incompetent grifter’s grift cracks.

This thread…it is open.

Image: Jan Steen, Dancing Peasants at an Inn, 1646

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He Has Reached Rock Bottom, And Has Started To Dig*

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In case you had any question as to just how skeevy — more, how fundamentally grotesque — was and is Roy Moore, here’s his reasoning on why sodomizing a child does not constitute “forcible rape”:

The Alabama Supreme Court had the opportunity to hear the case of one Eric Lemont Higdon, a man accused and convicted of two sodomy charges due to sexual assault against a four-year-old at Mama’s Place Christian Academy in Clay, Alabama.

 

Higdon had been convicted of both sex with a child under twelve years old, statutory rape, and of “first-degree sodomy by forcible compulsion” which requires that the victim face a threat, overt or implied, of  “serious physical injury.” That second forcible rape charge was overturned on appeal, and the question that Moore and his fellow state supreme court justices faced was whether that appellate decision was correct.  Almost all of the court had no problem working that one out:

Eight of the nine justices on the panel found that the appeals court had erred. Their legal logic was such that a 17-year-old’s sexual assault of a four-year-old was enough to produce in the mind of the four-year-old, an “implied threat of serious physical injury.”  The decision was reversed and remanded and Higdon’s conviction was reinstated.

Who dissented? That godly man Moore, of course:

“Because there was no evidence in this case of an implied threat of serious physical injury…or of an implied threat of death, Higdon cannot be convicted of sodomy in the first degree “by forcible compulsion.”

Four Years Old.

No implication of serious physical injury when a seventeen year old assaults a pre-schooler.  I wanted to put that last more bluntly, but I can’t. My stomach turns itself into a Klein bottle when I try.

What kind of man do you have to be to conceive of the scene between that youth and that little child and see no threat?

Roy Moore is not who we thought he was.  He’s much, much worse — and anyone who rises to his defense shares in his stain.

*From this time-honored list of British military fitness reports.  My favorite has always been “I would not breed from this Officer” — which, according to my uncle, a career man in the Royal Artillery, was known to refer to a fellow from a Guards regiment.  Posh don’t mean smart.

Image:  Diego Velasquez, Las Meninas, 1656-7.

This picture is not, perhaps, precisely on point with this post, but it knows the chords and is, in any case, a simply magnificent painting.

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A Setback For Hobby Lobby’s Bible Museum

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Hobby Lobby today agreed to forfeit thousands (yes, thousands) of cuneiform tablets and clay seals (bullae), along with 144 cylinder seals and $3 million dollars to the United States Government in a civil suit. The artifacts most likely were looted from Iraq and smuggled into the US as “tile samples” via the UAE. Removing artifacts from archaelogical sites removes them from their historical context and makes them largely unusable for understanding the past. The money from their sales often goes to organizations like ISIS.

According to the complaint and stipulated statement of facts filed with the court, in or around 2009, Hobby Lobby began to assemble a collection of historically significant manuscripts, antiquities and other cultural materials. In connection with this effort, Hobby Lobby’s president and a consultant traveled to the UAE in July 2010 to inspect a large number of cuneiform tablets and other antiquities being offered for sale (the “Artifacts”). Cuneiform is an ancient system of writing on clay tablets that was used in ancient Mesopotamia thousands of years ago.

In October 2010, an expert on cultural property law retained by Hobby Lobby warned the company that the acquisition of cultural property likely from Iraq, including cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals, carries a risk that such objects may have been looted from archaeological sites in Iraq. The expert also advised Hobby Lobby to review its collection of antiquities for any objects of Iraqi origin and to verify that their country of origin was properly declared at the time of importation into the United States. The expert warned Hobby Lobby that an improper declaration of country of origin for cultural property could lead to seizure and forfeiture of the artifacts by CBP.

Notwithstanding these warnings, in December 2010, Hobby Lobby executed an agreement to purchase over 5,500 Artifacts, comprised of cuneiform tablets and bricks, clay bullae and cylinder seals, for $1.6 million. The acquisition of the Artifacts was fraught with red flags. For example, Hobby Lobby received conflicting information where the Artifacts had been stored prior to the inspection in the UAE. Further, when the Artifacts were presented for inspection to Hobby Lobby’s president and consultant in July 2010, they were displayed informally. In addition, Hobby Lobby representatives had not met or communicated with the dealer who purportedly owned the Artifacts, nor did they pay him for the Artifacts. Rather, following instructions from another dealer, Hobby Lobby wired payment for the Artifacts to seven personal bank accounts held in the names of other individuals.

Hobby Lobby’s religion is so strong, though, that they can’t pay for insurance that would allow women to have contraceptives.

 

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