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Sunday Reads: Believe it or not.

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Say what?

Don’t worry, it didn’t permanently change their belief systems…as you will read from the link, the FoxNews people went back to their old ways soon enough.

Cartoon time, via Cagle website:

Gonna miss him👇🏼:

On the Covid news:

Take a look at this clip from Jimmy Kimmel:

The power of yolk compels you:

And you all have a good Sunday, this is an open thread.


Wednesday Reads: 4/20 again?

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Good morning!

What a fucking asshole. Anyway, another year, another meme:

Cartoons via Cagle website:

Grab her by the pussy:

And let’s end with this powerful speech:

This is an open thread.

Monday Reads: America has a gun fetish that’s killing us

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The Super Flower Blood Moon eclipse of 2022 over my house last night.

Good Day Sky Dancers!

I gaze through my Twitter feed which is loaded with all these photos of wipipo and their small army of indoctrinated children looking like they’re all about to head to The Aluminium Warehouse Church of the Almighty Dollar to get their sanctimony on or to everyone’s favorite store, movie theatre, or place of actual worship to slaughter the rest of us.

I’m trolling my stupid Senator again because he doesn’t seem to have any concept of being moral even though he throws bible verses on his feed day after day. Sometimes he sounds almost normal and then, he goes down the MAGA rabbit hole and sounds like a monster.

I am just sick of all the gun violence and white national terrorist violence and murder. I know I keep writing about it but folks like my one semi-cogent Senator are just fixated on all the wrong problems. For one, why do kids have access to dangerous weapons of war? For another, at what point do we start looking at Terrorist Manifestos and “news” broadcasts domestically and say this isn’t free speech, it is violent insurrection talking?

This is your basic child abuse. They look like a cult! And this is what their children grow up to do:

And this is your basic horrid policy. Let’s kill a lot of people by linking these two things together! And of course, let’s ignore gun violence even if you’re a doctor and every doctor’s organization calls it a Public Health Crisis.

Please read that thread from Sherrilyn Iffel. It’s enlightening. Please read this one too!!!

I’ve been caught in several shootouts in my neighborhood recently. The abandoned Naval Base is full of methheads and heroin addicts who come from the rural areas to the city. There are gunshots at least once a day. There have been at least 4 deaths there this month that are known around here from there. The police seem absolutely unable to do anything. Our crime wave is due to the long-ignored Opioid crisis. Why don’t we see some action there?

I grew up in a small Iowa town with a lot of people that had guns specifically for hunting. All I ever saw was the meat my dad would bring home when his friends shared their bounty. I have lived in this neighborhood for over 20 years and it was labeled as dangerous when I moved here. Well, the demographics have changed and the violence is appalling now. I’ll let you read between the lines. They are getting these ideas from one Party, from their Preachers, and from the likes of Tucker Carlson on Fox News.

Congressman Adam Schiff said it out loud. Fox News, Republicans, and white nationalist xtians are killing us and our democracy. There is no other way to look at this. They are after the rights of women, religious minorities, or the nonreligious, and they are after people of color and the GLBTQ community. It’s their way or we go to prison or they just turn their maladjusted little men on us with their tactical gear and semi-automatic weapons. OR, they let big Pharma loose to turn those little men into monsters.

And they send monsters to serve at the State and Federal levels who want the process to be rigged in their favor. Otherwise, they quit or go on Fox to howl like hyenas.

The number of proposed laws catering to one very small part of the Christian belief community is astounding. I just wished that a number of people heard those of us that experienced it from the 1980s forward and actually believed what we were saying. I was under attack as not being a ‘real’ Christian because I was a social justice Methodist at the time. One of my great grandfathers was a circuit rider in the Kansas/Oklahoma area doing just about the same thing as me so it’s a long tradition in my family.

Oh, and here are some pictures of my new Kitty Cristal who was rescued from the middle of neutral ground and is now happily installed on my bed. I’m hoping to distract you from all this distress with her as much as she is doing for me.

From Salon: “Why is the Supreme Court using religious belief to alter secular law? Alito’s draft opinion is full of specious legal and historical language — but it’s just religious doctrine in drag”. This is written by Thom Hartmann.

Democrats are generally disinclined to discuss religion, much less debate it.

They like to point out that Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin were famously atheist, Thomas Jefferson and dozens of other high-profile people in the founding generation were deists (a close cousin to atheists and certainly not Christians), and that in two different places the Constitution explicitly rejects religion interfering with government or vice versa.

But it’s time to discuss religion whether we like it or not, because it’s no longer knocking on our door: Sam Alito just sent it into the house with a no-knock warrant and stun grenades that threaten to catch the place on fire.

Alito’s Dobbs v. Jackson draft opinion rests on two main premises.

The first is that the Supreme Court has no business recognizing a “right” that isn’t rooted in the nation’s “history and tradition.”

This right-wing canard has been around for years, and has been used to argue against pretty much ever form of modernity from integrated public schools to, more recently, same-sex marriage. It’s a convenient pole around which you can twist pretty much any argument you want, because American history and tradition have been all over the map during the past roughly 240 years.

For example, Alito could just as easily have pointed out that there were no federal or state laws regulating abortion at all at the founding of our republic, and they didn’t really start showing up until the 1800s as physicians were clamoring for licensure to lock midwives out of birth-related medical practice (which included abortion).

The year Virginia got an abortion-regulating law, for example, was the same year — 1847 — that the American Medical Association was founded. Ben Franklin had been dead more than a half-century and not a single signer of the Declaration of Independence was still alive.

She sure sleeps better than I do!!

Read on. We’re in the dawning of the Age of DisReason and Religious tyranny. It’s back to the Middle Ages. We also know they are a well-armed bunch of Crusaders that have been whipped up into a frenzy by the Republican Party and Fox News. They also have plenty of playgrounds out on the Internet. They’ve been stacking courts since the Reagan years and look out!

And now, we have a fringe theory guiding yet another set of their reactionary movement. This is from the New York Times: “A Fringe Conspiracy Theory, Fostered Online, Is Refashioned by the G.O.P. Replacement theory, espoused by the suspect in the Buffalo massacre, has been embraced by some right-wing politicians and commentators.”

Inside a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, a white man with a history of antisemitic internet posts gunned down 11 worshipers, blaming Jews for allowing immigrant “invaders” into the United States.

The next year, another white man, angry over what he called “the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” opened fire on shoppers at an El Paso Walmart, leaving 23 people dead, and later telling the police he had sought to kill Mexicans.

And in yet another deadly mass shooting, unfolding in Buffalo on Saturday, a heavily armed white man is accused of killing 10 people after targeting a supermarket on the city’s predominantly Black east side, writing in a lengthy screed posted online that the shoppers there came from a culture that sought to “ethnically replace my own people.”

Three shootings, three different targets — but all linked by one sprawling, ever-mutating belief now commonly known as replacement theory. At the extremes of American life, replacement theory — the notion that Western elites, sometimes manipulated by Jews, want to “replace” and disempower white Americans — has become an engine of racist terror, helping inspire a wave of mass shootings in recent years and fueling the 2017 right-wing rally in Charlottesville, Va., that erupted in violence.

But replacement theory, once confined to the digital fever swamps of Reddit message boards and semi-obscure white nationalist sites, has gone mainstream. In sometimes more muted forms, the fear it crystallizes — of a future America in which white people are no longer the numerical majority — has become a potent force in conservative media and politics, where the theory has been borrowed and remixed to attract audiences, retweets and small-dollar donations.

By his own account, the Buffalo suspect, Payton S. Gendron, followed a lonelier path to radicalization, immersing himself in replacement theory and other kinds of racist and antisemitic content easily found on internet forums, and casting Black Americans, like Hispanic immigrants, as “replacers” of white Americans. Yet in recent months, versions of the same ideas, sanded down and shorn of explicitly anti-Black and antisemitic themes, have become commonplace in the Republican Party — spoken aloud at congressional hearings, echoed in Republican campaign advertisements and embraced by a growing array of right-wing candidates and media personalities.

My Dog Temple has a new buddy.

We’ve always had ugly racist, anti-semite, white nationalist movements lurking about but now they’re weaponizing the first and second amendment against the majority. And of course, some Republicans are calling it a “false flag” operation which means this ugly ass young man was really a liberal. This Senator is a white nationalist. From HuffPo: “State Senator Who Backs White Nationalism Suggests Buffalo Shooting Was False Flag. Arizona GOP Sen. Wendy Rogers promoted a deranged conspiracy theory after 10 people were killed in what authorities say was a

A Republican state lawmaker with ties to white nationalists suggested the racially motivated mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket was staged by government agents.
“Fed boy summer has started in Buffalo,” Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers wrote on Telegram. The first-term lawmaker has built a national profile among far-right extremists with incendiary rhetoric, diehard support for former President Donald Trump and an embrace of white nationalism.

Authorities said an 18-year-old white gunman traveled several hours on Saturday to a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, where he opened fire outside at a supermarket. Thirteen people were shot; 10 died. Most were Black. The accused killer left a manifesto riddled with racist views and references to the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that white Americans are being replaced by people of color, according to The New York Times.

Oh, and then there’s this from VOX: “The Supreme Court just made it much easier to bribe a member of Congress. A case brought by Ted Cruz is a huge boon to rich candidates and moneyed lobbyists.” SCOTUS weaponized the first amendment again and there’s nothing in the original Constitution about lobbyists and dark money so please, Alito, explain this one to me in “federalist” terms.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has been at war with campaign finance laws for more than a dozen years, stretching at least as far back as its decision in Citizens United v. FEC (2010). On Monday, the Court’s six Republican appointees escalated this war.

The Court’s decision in FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate is a boon to wealthy candidates. It strikes down an anti-bribery law that limited the amount of money candidates could raise after an election in order to repay loans they made to their own campaign.

Federal law permits candidates to loan money to their campaigns. In 2001, however, Congress prohibited campaigns from repaying more than $250,000 of these loans using funds raised after the election. They can repay as much as they want from campaign donations received before the election (although a federal regulation required them to do so “within 20 days of the election”).

The idea is that, if already-elected officials can solicit donations to repay what is effectively their own personal debt, lobbyists and others seeking to influence lawmakers can put money directly into the elected official’s pocket — and campaign donations that personally enrich a lawmaker are particularly likely to lead to corrupt bargains. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) manufactured a case to try to overturn that $250,000 limit, and now, the Court has sided with him.

Indeed, now that this limit on loan repayments has been struck down, lawmakers with sufficiently creative accountants may be able to use such loans to give themselves a steady income stream from campaign donors.

According to the Los Angeles Times, for example, Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-CA) made a $150,000 loan to her campaign at 18 percent interest in 1998 — before the 2001 law was enacted. Though Napolitano did eventually reduce the interest rate on this loan to 10 percent, the high-interest loan allowed her to make a considerable profit from donors.

Okay, there’s more about this shit but I can’t do it. Maybe BB will pick up on some of it tomorrow.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today!!

And love and snuggles from all of us at the kathouse! Here’s Ted Cruz with the Last Word today.

Wednesday Reads: Replacement Theory

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That cartoon above is by Pat Bagley, and it is another perfect example of the art of political cartoons.

Now as you know…political cartoons are my favorite. Here we go…via Cagle website:

There was such a problem with the last post I did on Sunday, that I wanted to share a few signs from the #BansOffOurBodies rallies that were held on Saturday…along with some updates and comments found on Twitter about the mass hate murder in Buffalo.

This next story takes place in a town just on the state line from Banjoville…

Before I share a few more cartoons and tweets, you need to see this from 60 Minutes…if you haven’t already seen it:

It is absolutely overwhelming to watch what this family discovers when one man buys an old house in the town where he grew up…I truly believe that God is a Black Woman, and I have to say…she is looking down on this family and guiding them on their journey here.

Here is an article about the family from January:

Okay, a few more cartoons:

Seriously, y’all need to follow Pat Bagley on the Twitter…

Oh yeah, I’m sure y’all know by now…

Updates on the Primaries.
An interesting thread…

I will end this post with a few cartoons from Luckovich:

And…this is an open thread.

Sunday Reads: Recalls and Control

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First off…there has been a recall of Jif peanut butter:

My daughter is feeling better now, but there is a big stink about the recall..because Jif and Smuckers is telling people to throw out the tubs of peanut butter, no mention of refunds being given. I don’t know…anyway.

Cartoons via Cagle:

Check out this quick video:

It’s a list of the 192 PLUBs that voted against starving babies…live birthed ones that is.

Now for some links.

Here’s a few other things via instagram…I hope you can see them.

Hope this post does not give and format issues. This is an open thread.

Wednesday Reads: Long live the legends… #Pride

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Yes…it is still #Pride month…so we’ll have more on this later in the thread.

First up, cartoons:

Still more…

Notice the shoes…

Now for some legendary moves:

Bow down to the Queen!

That is it for me… be safe, this is an open thread.

Sunday Reads: 🖤🤎❤️🧡💛💚💜💙🤍💖

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Artwork from HRC.org #HumanRightsCampaign

Good morning, aside from this being #PRIDE month… I’d like to remind our Sky Dancing family that we are all inclusive.

Meaning all are welcome.

However, I’ve been a bit put off by some of the tone against a particular group of the LGBTQ community. Specifically the 🏳️‍⚧️ T as in Trans…

This dialogue has gotten me upset and uncomfortable, and I have to speak out. If we are to be a blog that accepts the concept that all humans deserve acknowledgment that yes…human rights are exactly what that is…human rights, then Trans rights are Human rights.

Just like Women’s rights are Human rights, Black Lives Matter, Immigrant rights are Human rights, Kids rights are Human rights…it is the statement…Human rights are the fucking floor here!

Respect is standard.

My point being, inclusiveness is the key.

Intersectionality.

And that is not always the message which comes through.

So…let me say, for my own personal self here, that certain opinions and statements in the blog’s comments do not reflect my beliefs in any way. I fully support the LGBTQ community and that includes all, the T for Trans too.

We can be a champion for Women, all Women.

Yes, Women and People get pregnant and Women and People have abortions.

Now that I’ve said what I wanted to say for some time…

Let’s start with something to clear the air:

Amazing…dancer with Ballet Cuba.
This video made me feel so good…I hope it does that for you too.

Now, the cartoons:

Meanwhile…yesterday in Idaho:

“Reclaim America” is what is written on the back of that asshole’s shirt.

We had to put down Beef on Thursday, it turned out to be an exact year to the day since Bebe adopted him.

I’m going to end this post with a trip down memory lane…and this is not meant to be a comment on violence against women. It is more of a comment on how nice Alexis was, she packed up all that luggage for Blake and his “blond tramp” …

Dynasty…sweet…vicious.

This is an open thread. (Please, no anti-Trans comments…at least on Sundays and Wednesdays…)

Have a safe day today. Be careful.

Wednesday Reads: Kuchisabishii

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Good morning…

Fucking Republicans….

A few things on the abortion front:

And one last thought on yesterday…

This is an open thread.


Wednesday Reads: Fairy visitors…

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Good morning. I’ve been visited by the migraine fairy, so just a quick post today.

Cartoons via Cagle website:

If only:

Now that is a pretty purple bird.

This is an open thread.

Sunday Reads: The Fuckening

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the fuckening

When your day is going too well and you don’t trust it and some shit finally goes down

Ah, there it is, the fuckening.

Hello, yes…The Fuckening has begun, and from what has been said on the real verified Twit accounts (not those that paid for there blue check) it seems that it is just a matter of time now before Twitter finally bites the dust.

Veep predicted everything!

And now, the cartoons via Cagle website:

I know I posted this information about Shanquella Robinson before, but it’s important.

That is all…this is an open thread.

Tuesday Reads: Tales of Three Psychopaths

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Good Day Sky Dancers!!

I’ve been reading news for the past few hours, and I’m feeling a sense of unreality–not quite depersonalization, but something similar. Will this country ever return to something resembling sanity? I’m beginning to doubt it. I opened Twitter today to see Elon Musk mocking and defaming a disabled Twitter employee who had been locked out but could not get anyone in the company to tell him whether he had been laid off or fired, and if so, when he would be paid what he was owed.

Gizmodo: Elon Musk Laughs at Twitter Worker Who Asked If He Still Had a Job.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk sank to a new low on Monday night when he laughed at employee Haraldur Thorleifsson, who tweeted at him to ask whether he had been affected by the company’s recent layoffs. Throughout the course of their conversation on Twitter, Thorleifsson confirmed the worst: His days at Twitter were over.

Thorleifsson, founder of Ueno, a digital agency acquired by Twitter in 2021, found himself caught in a Musk-produced chaos a little more than a week ago, when he suddenly lost access to his work computer. The Ueno founder stated that he asked Twitter’s human resources department whether he still had a job but was told they didn’t know. After emailing Musk himself to no avail, Thorleifsson decided to do the next best thing. He tweeted at the Twitter CEO.

“Dear @elonmusk 👋 9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees,” Thorleifsson said on Monday afternoon. “However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You’ve ot answered my emails. Maybe if enough people retweet you’ll answer me here?” [….]

Thorleifsson’s tweet received tens of thousands of retweets and likes and succeeded in capturing Musk’s attention, which experience has shown us can lead to either good or bad things. The Platformer newsletter reported that the Twitter CEO was “furious” after an engineer broke links and images on Twitter on Monday morning, so it’s safe to assume that the chief twit was not having a good day.

Musk started by asking Thorleifsson, who is based in Iceland, what kind of work he had been doing. Thorleifsson stated that he couldn’t discuss that publicly on Twitter without prior approval from Musk’s lawyers, which Musk waved off, giving him permission in a tweet. The employee went on to list a number of things he was responsible for at the company, including heading the effort to save $500,000 on a SaaS contract, leading critiques to level up design across the company, serving as the hiring manager for all design roles, and prioritizing design projects to accommodate Twitter’s smaller team.

A notorious micromanager, Musk proceeded to ask for more details and then responded to Thorleifsson with two “🤣 🤣” emojis….

In a follow up tweet, Musk bombarded Thorleifsson with questions and demanded pictures of the employee’s work….

Thorleifsson told Musk that he couldn’t provide pics or docs because Twitter had locked his computer, adding that he could provide documentation if Musk restored his access to the device. After talking to Musk for about an hour, Thorleifsson tweeted that Twitter human resources had “miraculously” replied to confirm that he no longer worked at the company.

Musk, meanwhile, apparently unsatisfied with laughing at a former employee, decided to trash talk Thorleifsson hours after their exchange. The Twitter CEO cast doubt on Thorleifsson’s disability—he suffers from a type of muscular dystrophy called dystrophinopathy—and said he couldn’t have been fired since he didn’t work.

It was pretty clear in the exchange, which you can read on Twitter, that Musk did not even comprehend Halli’s description of his work for Twitter or that Twitter had bought out Halli’s design company and still owed him money.

Back to Gizmodo:

Thorleifsson responded to Musk’s cruel comments about his performance on Tuesday morning. After pointing out that Musk was revealing confidential health information, he explained the effects muscle dystrophy has on his body. Thorleifsson shared that he started using a wheelchair when he was 25 years old and today needs help to get in and out of bed and use the toilet.

Addressing Musk’s comments about his hands, Thorleifsson said he had told HR that he was unable to do manual work for extended periods of time, but can write for one or two hours at a time.

“This wasn’t a problem in Twitter 1.0 since I was a senior director and my job was mostly to help teams move forward, give them strategic and tactical guidance,” Thorleifsson stated. “I’m typing this on my phone btw. It’s easier for because I only need to use one finger.” [….]

Here’s a photo of Thorleifsson:

More information on Thorleifsson, from BBC News:

The Iceland-based entrepreneur had sold his company, Ueno, a creative design agency, to Twitter in early 2021 – after founding the firm in Reykjavik in 2014.

As part of the acquisition he became a full-time employee at Twitter.

“I decided to sell for a few reasons but one of them is that I have muscular dystrophy and my body is slowly but surely failing me,” he told the BBC.

“I have a few good work years left in me so this was a way to wrap up my company, and set up myself and my family for years when I won’t be able to do as much.”

Mr Thorleifsson is worried that Mr Musk will not honour the contract he signed with Twitter when he sold them his company.

“This is extremely stressful. This is my retirement fund, a way to take care of myself and my family as my disease progresses. Having the richest man in the world on the other end of this, potentially refusing to stand by contracts is not easy for me to accept,” he said.

Last month, Elon Musk appeared to fire another 200 Twitter employees. It means that Twitter now has just over 2,000 workers – down from approximately 7,500 in October.“Companies let people go, that’s within their rights,” Mr Thorleifsson said. “They usually tell people about it but that’s seemingly the optional part at Twitter now”.

I’ve probably spent too much time on this story, but I’m really having a hard time dealing with the fact that an ignorant psychopath like Musk has as much power as he does. Fortunately, he’s revealing his psychopathology to the world now, and perhaps that will bring him down a few pegs. On the other hand, it appears his fellow psychopath Donald Trump is never going to go away so maybe I’m just delusional.

And now, more Twitter tales:

This is from yesterday, and might partially explain Musk’s apparent stress level. Platformer: How a single engineer brought down Twitter on Monday.

On Monday morning, Twitter users logged on to find a thicket of connected issues. Clicking on links would no longer open them; instead, users would see a mysterious error message reporting that “your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint.” Images stopped loading as well. Other users reported that they could not access TweetDeck, the Twitter-owned client for professional users.

Chaos took over the timeline, as users tweeted vociferously about the outage — often illustrating their points with images that no one could see, because they wouldn’t load.

In a tweet, the company offered the vaguest of explanations for what was happening.

“Some parts of Twitter may not be working as expected right now,” the company’s support account tweeted. “We made an internal change that had some unintended consequences.”

The change in question was part of a project to shut down free access to the Twitter API, Platformer can now confirm. On February 1, the company announced it will no longer support free access to its API, which effectively ended the existence of third-party clients and dramatically limited outside researchers’ ability to study the network. The company has been building a new, paid API for developers to work with.

API stands for “Application Platform Interface.”  Twitter has previously allowed researchers, developers, and other applications free access to Twitter’s API. Now they will have to pay for the privilege. From Endgaget:

Of all the once-unthinkable changes Elon Musk had made since taking over Twitter, pulling the rug out from under developers might seem relatively minor. After banning third-party clients without warning, Twitter announced that it would no longer allow any developer to use its APIs for free.

So far, Twitter has communicated very little about the changes, other than confirming a February 9th cut-off date. Musk has suggested Twitter could charge $100 a month “with ID verification,” but hasn’t elaborated. What we do know, is that once free access is shut off, thousands of apps, research projects, bots and other services will stop functioning (or, at the very least, be interrupted). If you’re a Twitter user, chances are this will affect you in some way, and you shouldn’t wait until it’s too late to prepare.

Musk appears to be living in fear of his own workforce. Fortune: Elon Musk’s bodyguards follow him around the office—even to the restroom, Twitter employee says.

During an investigation by the BBC’s Panorama program, a Twitter staff member told the broadcaster that Musk did not appear to trust employees.

He argued that this is evident in the level of personal security Musk, who is acting Twitter CEO, brings with him to the office.

According to the employee—who still works at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco and spoke to the BBC under the condition of anonymity—Musk is always accompanied to work by multiple bodyguards.

“Wherever he goes in the office, there are at least two bodyguards—very bulky, tall, Hollywood movie [style] bodyguards,” he said. “Even when [he goes] to the restroom.” [….]

The same employee—one of many current and former Twitter staffers interviewed by Panorama—also alleged that Tesla engineers were being brought in to evaluate Twitter engineers’ coding. The evaluations, which would take a few days, were being used to decide who to fire, the employee claimed, despite the complex code requiring months before it could be understood.

He said this also gave him the sense that Musk did not trust his workforce at Twitter.

And now on to another powerful psychopath, Tucker Carlson of Fox “News.” On his show last night, Carlson selectively played some of the January 6 footage that Kevin McCarthy gave him, claiming to show that there was no significant violence in the Capitol insurrection.

Sahil Kapur at NBC News: Tucker Carlson, with video provided by Speaker McCarthy, falsely depicts Jan. 6 riot as a peaceful gathering.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday released security video from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, using footage provided exclusively to him by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to portray the riot as a peaceful gathering.

Carlson acquired the tapes as part of a pushby McCarthy, R-Calif., to win the speaker’s gavel. When McCarthy was struggling to gather the votes to lead the House, Carlson used his program to list two “concessions” he could make to win over far-right Republicans.

“First, release the January 6 files. Not some of the January 6 files and video — all of it,” Carlson, the most-watched host on cable news, said after McCarthy faced three failed votes. “So that the rest of us can finally know what actually happened on January 6, 2021.”

In the two months since McCarthy won the gavel, he has granted both. Carlson announced in late February that McCarthy had given him exclusive access to 44,000 hours of security video from the deadly riot before he unveiled some clips of the video on his show Monday night.

Carlson focused Monday’s segment on promoting former President Donald Trump’s narrative by showing video of his supporters walking calmly around the U.S. Capitol. He asserted that other media accounts lied about the attack, proclaiming that while there were some bad apples, most of the rioters were peaceful and calling them “sightseers,” not “insurrectionists.”

“The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress,” Carlson told his audience Monday. “Instead it shows police escorting people through the building, including the now-infamous ‘QAnon Shaman.’”

He continued: “More than 44,000 hours of surveillance footage from in and around the Capitol have been withheld from the public, and once you see the video, you’ll understand why. Taken as a whole, the video does not support the claim that Jan. 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim.”

Video that Carlson didn’t air shows police and rioters engaged in hours of violent combat. Nearly 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack. About 140 officers were assaulted that day, and about 326 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees, including 106 assaults that happened with deadly or dangerous weapons. About 60 people pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement. Two pipe bombs were also planted nearby but were not detonated.Carlson also lied about what happened to Brian Sicknick.

Read more at the NBC News link.

Some Twitter commentary on Tucker’s presentation:

Oliver Darcy at CNN: Tucker Carlson, with help from Kevin McCarthy, tries to sanitize the very real violence of the January 6 attack.

The face of Fox News is doing everything in his power to sanitize the horrific violence the nation saw unfold in real-time at the U.S. Capitol in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

And on Monday night, he had a major assist from Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who granted him exclusive access to tens of thousands of hours of January 6 security camera footage.

After continuing to sow doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election (“it is clear the 2020 election was a grave betrayal of American democracy”), Tucker Carlson used the footage on Monday night to portray those who broke into the U.S. Capitol as mostly peaceful patriots who simply felt wronged by the system. Carlson, who falsely claimed the footage provided “conclusive” evidence proving Democrats “lied” about the events of January 6, aired footage showing some people taking selfies and meandering through the U.S. Capitol.

“Taken as a whole the video record does not support the claim that January 6th was an insurrection,” Carlson claimed. “In fact, it demolishes that claim.”

The whole episode said more about McCarthy than it did Carlson. In effect, McCarthy served as Carlson’s reluctant, but obedient, accomplice, providing Carlson the ink in the Fox News conspiracy theorist’s quest to rewrite the events of the day in which the country’s citadel of democracy was assaulted. Those events were inspired by the very same election denying rhetoric the right-wing talk channel that pays Carlson’s handsome multi-million salary gave platform to in the wake of the 2020 contest.

McCarthy, of course, knew precisely what he was doing when he handed over the footage to Carlson while denying it to actual news organizations.

Read the rest at CNN.

The third psychopath needs no introduction, of course. Trump is the psychopath who gave other psychopaths permission to take their insanity public. Here’s what he is up today.

In the face of all this madness, it shouldn’t be surprising that I’m experiencing some dissociation today. Now I’m going to sit quietly for awhile and try to pull myself together.

Thursday Reads

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spanish-still-life-Henri Matisse, 1911

Spanish Still Life, Henri Matisse, 1911

Good Morning!!

The Fox News-Dominion lawsuit and the Tucker Carlson-Kevin McCarthy effort to paint January 6 as a tourist visit are still getting the most attention in today’s political news. I’ll get to that in a minute. But first, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been hospitalized after a fall last night. McConnell is 81.

The Washington Post: Mitch McConnell hospitalized after falling at hotel.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been hospitalized following a fall at a hotel in Washington, his spokesman said late Wednesday.

The 81-year-old senator was attending a private dinner at a local hotel when he tripped, spokesman David Popp said in a statement. “He has been admitted to the hospital where he is receiving treatment,” he added, without providing any further details on his condition.

McConnell, who is serving his seventh six-year term in the Senate, became GOP leader in 2007. He has held the post for longer than any other Republican and for years has been among the most powerful elected officials in Washington.

He previously underwent surgery following a serious fall in August 2019, when he fractured his shoulder after tripping outside his Louisville home. The procedure kept him out of the public eye for weeks as he spent the congressional break recovering at home and undergoing physical therapy.

The senator, who overcame polio as a child, also has a history of heart issues and underwent triple bypass surgery in 2003, just after being promoted to the No. 2 Senate Republican post.

When pictures emerged in 2020 showing his hands bruised and bandaged, he downplayed interest in his health as media hype. As of December, the average age in the Senate was 64.

We don’t know how serious his injuries are yet. Maybe we’ll learn something later today.

The latest on the Fox News-Dominion story. The “journalists” on the “news” side of Fox are pissed off.

Justin Baragona at The Daily Beast: Fox News Journalists Sound Off on ‘Soul-Crushing’ Dominion Filings.

“I think no regular person could read this and look at Fox like a news organization at this point.”

In the wake of bombshell legal filings showing that Fox News executives and stars seemingly sought to pacify their disgruntled MAGA viewers by airing election lies, while punishing and censoring the employees attempting to deliver the actual truth, the above observation has become commonplace within media circles.

Pierre Auguste Renoir, By the Water or Near the Lake 1880

Pierre Auguste Renoir, By the Water or Near the Lake 1880

But some of the shots are being fired from within the conservative cable giant.

According to nine Fox News staffers and insiders, the pre-trial filings in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News further impugn and sully the reputation of the network’s “straight news” journalists, especially since they show Fox was “operating out of fear” over losing viewers to smaller right-wing competitors following its Decision Desk’s early (and accurate) Arizona election night call for President Joe Biden.

“We are not happy,” one reporter told The Daily Beast.

At the same time, five sources familiar with the situation say that despite the very public reputational harm resulting from the Dominion documents, the news side has been kept in the dark on the filings, with no communication from Fox’s corporate management or human resources department.

“It’s just a really bad time to be working here,” one news producer said.

The prime time entertainment stars have waged war on the “journalists,” despite the fact that everyone from Rupert Murdoch down knew that Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen were complete nonsence.

More than anything, the tranche of internal messages and texts Dominion obtained from Fox executives, hosts, and producers show a network in full-blown crisis over the fear of losing its relevance within the conservative movement—and a network whose top stars loathed the fact-driven journalists on the “hard news” side.Rupert Murdoch, the head of the Fox empire, privately conceded that Trump’s claims were “really crazy stuff,” and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott warned shortly after the election that they shouldn’t “give the crazies an inch.”

Even stars like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham privately trash-talked Team Trump’s “insane” fraud claims. But despite all that, the Fox hosts were simultaneously boosting them on the network’s airwaves in the days and weeks after the election.

More than anything, the tranche of internal messages and texts Dominion obtained from Fox executives, hosts, and producers show a network in full-blown crisis over the fear of losing its relevance within the conservative movement—and a network whose top stars loathed the fact-driven journalists on the “hard news” side.Rupert Murdoch, the head of the Fox empire, privately conceded that Trump’s claims were “really crazy stuff,” and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott warned shortly after the election that they shouldn’t “give the crazies an inch.”

Even stars like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham privately trash-talked Team Trump’s “insane” fraud claims. But despite all that, the Fox hosts were simultaneously boosting them on the network’s airwaves in the days and weeks after the election.

Other hard news Fox hosts such as Neil Cavuto and Leland Vittert also found themselves in the crosshairs for pushing “anti-Trump” narratives in the days following the election.

There’s much more on the “news” vs. entertainment war at the link above.

Field Flowers, Andrew Wyeth

Field Flowers, Andrew Wyeth

Brian Stelter at Vanity Fair: “We’re All Embarrased”: Inside Fox News as Dominion Revelations Rattle the Network.

Stelter writes that Fox has been holding workshops for its employees on libel law, including the concept of “actual malice.”

Insiders say the workshops have happened for years. Indeed, legal refreshers are routine at major media companies—make sure you ask for comment, choose your adjectives carefully, attribute incendiary claims. But there is nothing routine about this moment in Fox News history. Every new legal filing in Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation suit sets off a wave of coverage, criticism, and mockery, from the front page of The New York Times to the cold open of Saturday Night Live. More revelations came Tuesday, including Tucker Carlson saying of Donald Trump, “I hate him passionately,” and Rupert Murdoch saying “I hate our Decision Desk people”—the ones who accurately projected that Joe Biden had beat Trump.

From a corporate HR standpoint, some of the most destabilizing texts show Fox’s most powerful opinion hosts—Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham—dumping on their colleagues on the “news” side. New court filings show the opinion hosts derided numerous Fox reporters by name. “We thought they hated us,” one correspondent said, “but now we know it in their own words.”

For the people caught up in the case, whose private messages are being exposed and ridiculed, the process is “excruciating,” an on-air personality said. However, they have had months to prepare for this moment, since the discovery procedures and depositions ate up much of last year.

A Fox News spokeswoman declined to comment on Vanity Fair’s reporting about the recent legal training classes—or whether stars like Hannity had to participate. But in a statement Tuesday about the new filings, Fox accused Dominion of distorting the truth “in their PR campaign to smear FOX News and trample on free speech and freedom of the press.”

Such official dismissals aren’t shutting down the chatter inside Fox, though employees are cautious about when and where they gossip about the latest cache of private exchanges made public. “We’re very careful when we’re miked up,” said the on-air personality. “And we’re not texting about it.” Half a dozen Fox employees found other ways to share insights for this story. All were granted anonymity because they would never be allowed to address such a sensitive subject on the record. Even the network’s own media analyst, Howard Kurtz, has been muzzled: He disclosed on February 27 that “the company has decided that as part of the organization being sued, I can’t talk about it or write about it, at least for now.”

Again, you can read much more about the internal war at the network at the Vanity Fair link.

There’s also a battle raging between Fox News and Donald Trump.

The Washington Post: Inside the simmering feud between Donald Trump and Fox News.

Donald Trump got a tip-off on Saturday that the Fox News Channel would be taking his Conservative Political Action Conference speech live, a switch from the network’s largely indifferent posture toward the former president since he helped send it into crisis after the 2020 election.

amaryllis-1910, Piet Mondrian

Piet Mondrian, Amaryllis, 1910

Trump decided he could not pass up the opportunity to send a message.

“I hope Fox doesn’t turn off, but we did much better in 2020 than we did in 2016,” he said in an apparent reference to the false election claims that were at the center of many of the network’s controversies, including a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News that has led to a massive release of internal company documents.

It was just another volley in a low-grade war — some of it public, much of it hidden — that has emerged as one of the defining dynamics in the Republican Party as the 2024 presidential campaign gets underway. Trump’s advisers see in Fox News leadership a clear adversary in their march back to the White House and have sought to foster a divide between executives and “the brave and patriotic” opinion hosts with whom he continues to have relationships.

Trump attacked Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch by name this month, calling him and his executives a “group of MAGA hating Globalist RINOS” who are “aiding & abetting the destruction of America.” Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr. — noting that he had not been invited on the network in six months — accused Fox News leaders last week of harboring an “America Last, war forever, garbage, fold-to-the-Democrats agenda.” Other allies, such as Stephen K. Bannon, have shredded the network in public.

Documents uncovered by ongoing litigation have also revealed the extent of the ongoing hostility toward Trump from Murdoch and other top executives, both before and after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Fox News boss emailed a former company executive in early 2021 that the goal was “to make Trump a non person.” Fox News board member Paul D. Ryan, a former Republican House speaker, told another Fox executive around the same time that he had communicated to both Rupert Murdoch and Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch that there was a “huge inflection point to keep Trump down and move on.”

Good luck with that. Trump is never going to stop making trouble for all of us until he finally kicks the bucket.

The New York Times: Records Show Fox and G.O.P.’s Shared Quandary: Trump.

“Do we have enough dead people for tonight?”

It was a week after the 2020 elections, and Tucker Carlson — along with Fox News executives and other hosts — had watched with panic as Fox viewers, furious and disbelieving at President Donald J. Trump’s defeat, began to turn against the top-rated network. The viewers believed Mr. Trump’s claims that a widespread conspiracy of voter fraud was behind his loss. And as Mr. Carlson’s nightly 8 p.m. hour approached, the host pushed his producers to give the viewers what they wanted.

He demanded examples of dead people voting in Nevada or Georgia, even offering to call the Trump campaign personally to ask for help. That night, he trumpeted the evidence, borrowed from a Trump campaign news release: Four allegedly dead Georgians had cast ballots. Within days, though, the campaign’s spoon-fed examples began to fall apart. Three of the dead Georgians were actually alive. And Mr. Carlson was forced to partly retract his allegations, while insisting to viewers that “a whole bunch of dead people did vote.”

Alfred_Sisley_The small meadows in spring

Alfred_Sisley, The Small Meadows in Spring

Mr. Carlson’s frantic effort to appease angry Fox viewers, revealed in texts and emails released as part of a $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems, underscore the central quandary faced both by Fox and the Republican Party in the wake of Mr. Trump’s defeat and still today, as the former president mounts another campaign for the White House.

Like the Republican Party more broadly, Fox wants and needs the support of Trump fans, who both dominate party primaries and form the core of Fox’s viewership. And like the party, Fox has found it difficult to quit Mr. Trump even as his manic efforts to relitigate his defeat have hobbled the party in subsequent elections.

Fox News has been the most trusted and watched source of information for conservative America for decades, and its frequent symbiosis with the Republican Party is well established. But the internal documents released in recent days have provided an unprecedented glimpse into network decision-making as its dual imperatives — to keep its base audience of conservatives satisfied and meet its promise to maintain journalistic standards of fairness and factuality — came into conflict as never before.

This is one of those long, gossipy articles, mostly focusing on Tucker Carlson. Read the rest at the NYT.

For more on Carlson’s struggles, you can also read this piece at Politico by media reporter Jack Shafer: Opinion | The Tucker Carlson Schtick Melts Away. We finally know what the Fox News host really believes.

Also check out this story by Olivia Beavers and Sarah Farris at Politico: McCarthy’s GOP tries to move on from Tucker Carlson-Jan. 6 drama.

Mere hours after Tucker Carlson’s latest segment minimizing the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, House Republicans were eager to change the subject from the Fox News host’s riot revisionism.

While Carlson continued to roil Washington, many GOP lawmakers who gathered Wednesday morning were celebrating their unexpected win on a bill rolling back progressive D.C. crime laws and plotting their response to Thursday’s White House budget.

Carlson didn’t come up at all during House Republicans’ meeting, according to four members in the room who spoke on condition of anonymity. And not a single GOP lawmaker asked about it when given the chance to speak. In fact, some members were privately surprised by the amiability of this week’s first closed-door huddle — generally because there is usually some drama, but particularly since the Fox News segment has publicly reopened painful cross-party fissures over Jan. 6, 2021.

Yet Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s decision to let Carlson access thousands of hours of Capitol footage from the riot has left a lingering cloud over his own leadership team, which was repeatedly pressed about the move as Carlson continues to downplay the violence of the siege by supporters of former President Donald Trump. Senate Republicans heaped criticism Tuesday on Carlson’s portrayal of the riot, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (though few directly dinged McCarthy).

“It seems like some in the press want to talk about Jan 6 every day. So do Democrats. They only want to talk about certain parts of it, though,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told reporters during a press conference where every question focused on the Fox News footage.

spring-flowers-1884, Claude Monet

Spring Flowers, 1884, by Claude Monet

Other House Republicans are planning to “investigate” the January 6 Committee investigation. NBC News: Republicans launch an investigation into the Jan. 6 committee that examined the riot.

A Republican-controlled House committee launched an inquiry Wednesday into the Democratic-controlled Jan. 6 committee, which a staff member said will review whether pertinent information about the riot was omitted from the high-profile examination of the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Many House Republicans were vocal critics since the creation of the Jan. 6 committee, and the inquiry seems to make good on lawmaker campaign trail vows to investigate the investigators.

The House Administration’s subcommittee on oversight will be combing through the massive amount of records collected by the Jan. 6 committee, which was dissolved in January, said the staffer, with the goal of analyzing how the panel conducted the investigation….

The subcommittee — made up of four Republicans and two Democrats — will be looking into roughly two million documents and records, the source said, which the House Administration Committee obtained from the House Rules Committee after the Jan. 6 panel was dissolved.

The subcommittee will be led by Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., a Trump ally who had his own run-in with the Jan. 6 committee. The panel accused Loudermilk of giving tours of the Capitol in the days leading up to the riot.

Video footage showed Loudermilk guiding a tour of House office buildings during a time when the complex was closed off to visitors because of pandemic restrictions. Loudermilk has strenuously denied that the group he was leading was using the tour to inspect the facility ahead of the riot.

I suspect this “investigation” will be about as successful as Jim Jordan’s “weaponization of government” subcommittee.

One more January 6 story from Politico’s Alexander Burns: A Startling Document Predicted Jan. 6. Democrats Are Missing Its Other Warnings.

Weeks before the 2020 election, a secret 87-page document outlined in matter-of-fact language the threat posed by Donald Trump’s still-to-come campaign of election denial. The private paper — the existence of which has not been reported before — forecast with chilling confidence the likelihood of violence during the presidential handover and proposed a far-reaching set of political reforms to thwart Trumpism in the future.

Americans remember that dark winter well. But the impetus for structural change has faded, even among Democrats who still privately seethe about the country’s broken political system — and fear an uglier meltdown could come in 2024 or beyond.

Irises and Roses, Vincent Van GoghThe report carried a plain title: Plan D. Reading it, I wondered if the D stood for “doomsday.”

Actually, the letter was not a cipher. Plan D was the fourth of several studies organized by an opaque advocacy group, known as the Hub, to prepare for the depredations of the Trump era. The Hub is known in Washington for its sophisticated dark-money interventions in electoral politics. During the 2020 campaign, it also gathered up strategists, lawyers and activists to draft plans for a different kind of conflict.

The document is an artifact from a dangerous time: Warning that Trump would surely not concede defeat to Joe Biden, it advised Trump’s opponents to “assume the worst” would follow. It urged them to gird for a struggle not only with the president but with “institutions controlled or influenced by the GOP, including the courts.” The document forecast “militia and white supremacist activities through the inauguration — and, very likely, accelerated activity in the early months of a Biden administration.”

Plan D is sobering reading even today. It is a catalog of the defects in America’s electoral process and political culture that made it vulnerable to a rampaging demagogue— defects that some Democrats wanted to fix with drastic measures.

Should Biden lose narrowly, the report said, “layers of illegitimate structures and interventions will have contributed to it.” It closed with a warning against complacency even if Trump were to be defeated.

“A Biden win will not prove that our democracy is healthy,” the document argued, continuing: “Win, lose, or draw, we should perceive ourselves not in a singular moment of crisis but rather in what may be an era of existential challenge for American democracy.”

It’s a long read, and pretty dispiriting.

A few more stories, links only:

The New York Times: Former Army Private Sentenced to 45 Years in Neo-Nazi Plot to Kill Soldiers.

The Washington Post: GOP operative comes forward as accuser in sexual misconduct claim against CPAC head.

NBC News: 6-year-old who shot teacher won’t face charges, prosecutor says.

The Washington Post: The fear and fury of these Florida parents.

That’s it for me today. Have a great Thursday everyone!!

Wednesday Cartoons: Priorities

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Morning, there are some good cartoons today… and some fantastic memes, like this one up top that Dak shared with me. So let’s just get on with it:

Hopefully you can read that…

This next one is just, disgusting:

Ending with Luckovich:

This is an open thread.

Wednesday Cartoons: Fascist at Work

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So…good morning. A few days ago, I sent the message below to Dak and BostonBoomer:

And as you can see from the cartoon up top, my thoughts have been somewhat drawn out by cartoonist Marian Kamensky.

Seriously, tRump and his supporters…including those in government positions, have me worried. I hope everyone shows up next year.

Alright, I’ve been taking care of Mama Fluffeh cat and her four kittens. Hopefully, if everything goes well…we will be keeping the two boys, Boo and Cooter. Boo for the silver kitty, Cooter for the other boy kitty, cause my daughter says she saw him being born…ie being flung from his mama’s cooter.

Anyway, here are the cartoons:

Damn, WordPress is giving me some problems with the formatting on these images…hopefully I can get them fitted correctly.

Anyway, if the cartoons are cut off, that is why…blame WordPress. If you are having trouble reading the images/cartoons, you can click on the picture and it will enlarge so you should be able to see it better.

I will post some newsy links below and more in the comments:

Meanwhile in Ohio:

Fuck yeah!

At least that is some good news.

I know tRump still has his passport, I just thought it was funny.

Please be safe, try to stay cool. This is an open thread.

Oh btw, Fuck Matt Yglesias:

Thursday Cartoons: Bloody Hell

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Mama Fluffeh at the vet…

Good morning…I’m still avoiding the news, but here are a few things that got some notice:

I guess we’ll find out more later…the court website supposedly crashed because so many people were trying to access the site.

Fucking assholes.

Y’all try and keep warm and safe if you are in the track of this storm.

Boston Boomer sent me this tweet yesterday:

Watch that video it is unbelievable! BB says the judge was taken to the hospital but is ok…thanks to her clerk…just fucking crazy.

So this happened on Fox News:

That is all for now, this is an open thread.


Sunday: Eggs! Eggs! Eggs!

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Good morning and Happy Easter to those who celebrate…

Yes, that is a clip from John Waters’ Pink Flamingos 🦩🦩🦩 starring Edith Massey as the Egg Lady.

Here is a long clip with the Egg Man!

Gotta love it!

One last clip…Egg Paranoia…

From CrochetEncountersofaWoolieKind

Since it is a holiday…I’m keeping it light today:**

Now for a few cartoons, since it is a Sunday:

**Light? Who am I kidding? There is too much shit going on to keep things light:

Yeah…you read that right.

Meanwhile this is being said on Fox News:

I feel like Larry David:

In other news:

Oof! I need a break after that little purge of news:

Awesome.

Have a safe and Happy Sunday! This is an open thread.

Thursday Cartoons: 1864 Bullshit

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Tuesday Cartoons and Memes: WTF NYT?

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Good morning. This latest from the New York Times is making me want to puke. 🤢🤮

That is actually not a joke. That is an actual op/ed that was published by the New York Times.

An editor looked at this shit and said, yes…I will publish that.

With that in mind:

Meanwhile, down in Georgia:

I’m glad they have got this started.

A few more concerns:

Yes, that is chicken noises over trump talking!

Now for some cartoons via Cagle:

That’s all for now, please be safe out there and try to keep cool. This is an open thread.

Yes, it’s a new one!

Tuesday Cartoons and Memes: They’re eating your pets!

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Good morning…I posted this meme on Sunday, but it seems like it should be highlighted again today.

Starting with some news, and I have to go to a local news outlet to get coverage of this one:

Yeah…it’s fucking disgusting. I looked everywhere for this story and had problems finding it.

But funny enough, the Orlando Sentinel never tweeted this story out on the Shxitter…I wonder why?

You can read the article here:

https://digitaledition.orlandosentinel.com/html5/mobile/production/default.aspx?edid=dd16d059-f284-488b-8f92-8c52cfda1234

More news:

BB sent me the cover photo of the Atlantic…

Cartoons via Cagle:

Sorry, this is personal:

Yesterday we lost an amazing actor. James Earl Jones.

I can truly say I’ve grown up with James Earl Jones in my life:

Just a beautiful and gifted man.

I know this is a long post, but there are some more newsy items I have to bring to your attention:

I will post the latest update on Francine in the comments below…

And lastly a new Randy Rainbow:

Have a safe day today…please be careful out there and this is an open thread.

Finally Friday Reads: Full-on Full Moon Crazy

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“Every single time he opens his mouth…” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

If you got to look into the sky last night, you got to see the Hunter’s supermoon.  There certainly was a lot of Lunacy yesterday.  That causation or even correlation doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny, but it has a literary tradition covering nearly all periods of history.  DonOld’s Yesterday fits the adage neatly.

“It is the very error of the moon.She comes more near the earth than she was wont. And makes men mad.”
—William Shakespeare, Othello

Speaking of madness,  “North Korea sends troops to support Russia in Ukraine war: NIS.” This was announced in The Korea Herald.

North Korea has dispatched special forces to support Russia in its war against Ukraine, with the first batch already having arrived in Russia and a second group of North Korean troops expected to follow soon, South Korea’s intelligence agency claimed on Friday.

The National Intelligence Service said it “confirmed that North Korea began its participation in the war by transporting special forces to Russia via Russian Navy transport ships from Oct. 8 to 13.”

However, the NIS provided no substantial evidence to support this claim, other than satellite imagery showing Russian vessels docked at the port of Chongjin in North Hamgyong Province.

Four amphibious ships and three escort ships from the Russian Pacific Fleet transported around 1,500 North Korean special forces to Vladivostok during this period, departing from areas near Chongjin and Musudan-ri in North Hamgyong Province, as well as Hamhung in South Hamgyong Province, according to the NIS.

The NIS further stated that a second operation to transport North Korean troops to Russia is “expected to take place soon.”

The North Korean soldiers deployed to Russia have been stationed at military bases in the Far East, spread across cities such as Vladivostok, Ussuriysk, Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk.

“They are expected to be sent to the battlefield once they complete their adaptation training,” the intelligence agency added.

According to the NIS, the North Korean soldiers were provided with Russian military uniforms and Russian-made weapons. They were also issued fake identification documents resembling residents of Siberian regions such as Yakutia and Buryatia, whose appearance is similar to North Koreans.

“This appears to be an attempt to disguise them as Russian soldiers and conceal their involvement in the war,” the NIS stated.

The NIS also reported that Kim Jong-sik, the first vice director of North Korea’s Munitions Industry Department and a key figure in the country’s missile development, was observed visiting a North Korean KN-23 missile launch site near the Russia-Ukraine front. He was accompanied by dozens of North Korean military officers to provide on-site guidance.

“It’s incomprehensible,” John Buss. @repeat1968. “More Full moon Madness!!!” me

American Madman DonOld is showing his age; finally, the legacy media have noticed and are reporting it.  It only took 39 minutes of swaying to his playlist at a rally for them to start asking the real questions. He’s evidently tuckered out. “Trump cancels a streak of events with only days until election.” This is reported in AXIOS by Ivana Saric

Former President Trump’s planned appearance at a National Rifle Association event next week was cancelled Thursday, the latest in a slew of scuttled public appearances and interviews by the former president in recent weeks.

Why it matters: With only 17 days to go until Election Day, the spate of cancellations gives voters fewer chances to hear from Trump before heading to the polls in a coin toss race.

  • Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, has been on a media blitz after enduring criticism from Republicans about a perceived lack of interviews.
  • And while Harris has ventured into the unfriendly territory of a Fox News interview, Trump has stuck to the safe spaces of conservative outlets.
  • In the appearances he has made, Trump’s rhetoric has grown more violent and nativist. In recent weeks, he has decried his critics as the “enemy from within” and fanned the flames of false conspiracy theories about migrants.

Driving the news: The NRA said Thursday it had cancelled its “Defend the 2nd” event with Trump in Savannah, Georgia, next week due to “campaign scheduling changes.”

  • Trump also pulled out of two mainstream media interviews this week, with NBC News and CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
  • Earlier this month he backed out of a scheduled appearance on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” while Harris appeared on the program.
  • The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment.

Between the lines: Several of the events and interviews Trump has appeared at in recent weeks have raised eyebrows.

  • Trump cut short a Pennsylvania town hall this week to listen and sway to music for more than half an hour. “Let’s make it into a music fest,” Trump said. “Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?”
  • In an interview with Bloomberg News at the Chicago Economic Club Tuesday, Trump downplayed the Capitol riot and struggled to respond when confronted about the costs of his economic plans
  • Trump later claimed he was “hoodwinked” into the interview.
  • During an all-women Fox News town hall that aired Wednesday, Trump declared himself the “father of IVF,” a decades-old fertility treatment that has come under threat since overturning Roe v. Wade — which Trump has repeatedly bragged about ending.

DonOld is asking for a sitdown with Rupert Murdoch. This is from MEDIAITE’s Isaac Schorr. “Donald Trump Outlines His Demands For Rupert Murdoch Live On Fox News Ahead of Private Meeting: ‘I Don’t Know If He’s Thrilled.’”

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump outlined his demands for conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch live on Fox News Friday morning, musing that Murdoch should stop airing negative ads and allowing Democratic guests on the network in the run up to Election Day.

After Fox & Friends’ Lawrence Jones thanked Trump for appearing on the show Friday, the former president jumped back in to ask Jones and his co-hosts, “You know what the event I have now?”

“No,” said Brian Kilmeade.

“A very big event,” continued the former president. “I’m going to see Rupert Murdoch.”

A pensive Kilmeade replied, “Alright,” and Steve Doocy exclaimed, “Okay!” before Trump pressed on.

“That’s a big event. I don’t know if he’s thrilled that I say it. And I’m going to tell him, I’m gonna tell him something very simple because I can’t talk to anybody else about it: Don’t put on negative commercials for 21 days, don’t put them. And don’t put on the air their horrible people. They come and lie. I’m going to say, ‘Rupert, please do it this way.’”

“Right,” interjected Kilmeade.

“And then we’re going to have a victory, because I think everyone wants that,” concluded Trump.

Salon Fellow Griffin Eckstein reports that Faux News Reader Brett Baier is very sorry about his behavior during his interview with Vice President Harris. “”I did make a mistake”: Baier apologizes for playing edited Trump clip in Harris interview. The Fox News anchor’s deceptive video clip left out Trump’s remarks about “enemies from within.”

Fox News anchor Bret Baier is apologizing for playing a misleadingly edited clip in an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Harris sat down with Baier on Wednesday for a tense interview, in which the “Special Report” host repeatedly cut off and chastised the Democratic candidate. One exchange in particular gave the game away.

When Harris admonished former President Trump over suggestions that he’d sic the military on his political opponents, Baier aired a portion of a Trump interview that omitted his comments against “the enemy from within.”

“I’m not threatening anybody,” Trump said in the clip Baier played. “They’re the ones doing the threatening.”

In a Thursday night episode of “Report,” Baier owned up his misdirection.

“I wanna say that I did make a mistake,” Baier admitted. “When I called for a soundbite, I was expecting a piece of the ‘enemy from within’ from Maria Bartiromo’s interview, to be tied to the piece from [Harris Faulkner’s ]town hall.”

Baier went on to play the intended clip for his audience, though Harris was still able to get her point across the previous night despite the misleading edit.

“You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people,” the vice president said on Wednesday. “In a democracy, the president of the United States, in the United States of America, should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he would lock people up for doing it.”

Even the New York Times is noticing DonOld’s crazy demeanor and speech these days. “Trump’s Meandering Speeches Motivate His Critics and Worry His Allies. Some advisers and allies of former President Donald J. Trump are concerned about his scattershot style on the campaign trail as he continues to veer off script.” This is reported by Michael C. Bender.

Now, some Trump advisers and allies say privately they are concerned that the dynamic may be repeating itself four years later. They worry that Mr. Trump’s impetuousness and scattershot style on the campaign trail needlessly risk victory in battleground states where the margin for error is increasingly narrow.

At a time when his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, has stepped up her attacks on him as “unstable,” Mr. Trump has struggled to publicly hone his message by veering off script and ramping up personal attacks on Ms. Harris that allies have urged him to rein in.

“When he’s good, he’s great, and when he’s off message, he’s not so great,” said David Urban, a Trump adviser. “I don’t think anyone is really changing their mind at this point, but when he distracts from his biggest, broadest messaging, it’s counterproductive because the Harris campaign uses it to turn out their voters.”

During a speech on Saturday in California, he described mail-in ballots as “so corrupt,” reviving one of his false attacks on the 2020 election results, and did a play-by-play of his internal thoughts when he watched SpaceX, Elon Musk’s spaceflight company, fly a rocket back onto its launch site.

On Sunday, in response to a question on Fox News about the possibility of foreign adversaries’ meddling in the election, he reverted to autocratic language by saying “the bigger problem is the enemy from within.” On Monday, he halted a town-hall event in suburban Philadelphia after five questions when two people in the crowd needed medical attention. He spent roughly the next half-hour playing D.J., swaying and grooving in front of his crowd to a playlist he curated from the stage. “Let’s just listen to music,” he said.

Last week, he canceled a CBS interview on “60 Minutes,” in which he and Ms. Harris were both scheduled to appear — and has not stopped talking about it. He complained about it during events in Detroit and Reno, Nev., and again on Monday in a social media post at 1:12 a.m.

All of this makes me wonder if he doesn’t care about winning or if he’s just relying on a country-wide repeat J6 event and his cronies planted in positions to disrupt the voting process in many states.  It might be he has other things on his rapidly disintegrating mind. Just a few hours ago, Judge Tanya Chutkin, keeper of the American Way and the U.S. Constitution, allowed the Special Counsel to open up the floodgates of evidence.  This is from CNN. “Special counsel releases trove of redacted documents in 2020 election subversion case against Trump.”  October Surprise, perhaps?  Care to Dance in the Moonlight with me?

Special counsel Jack Smith on Friday released a massive trove of heavily redacted documents in his 2020 election subversion criminal case against former President Donald Trump.

There are nearly 2,000 pages in a massive trove of documents released Friday, but nearly all of the pages appear to be completely redacted.

The redacted appendices filed on the public docket in the case are related to Smith’s expansive filing from earlier this month that laid out his fullest picture yet of the case against Trump and Smith’s belief that his actions around the 2020 election should not be shielded by presidential immunity.

One volume is filled with sealed pages as well as tweets and other social media posts from Trump, his campaign and allies, including some posted during the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

One of the tweets include Trump’s post that day that Vice President Mike Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done” that day in supporting his effort to change the election results.

Others include a myriad of claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election.

Prosecutors have argued that these tweets from Trump should be allowed to be used in the trial because they were personal in nature or part of his campaigning efforts and not his official duties as president.

The documents were released a day after Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected a bid by Trump to pause the release. Trump argued that posting the documents now could be seen as election inference and had asked them to remain under seal until after Election Day.

“If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute – or appear to be – election interference,” Chutkan wrote in a decision late Thursday.

Another volume contains memos from lawyer John Eastman with a plan for Pence to reject the congressional certification of the 2020 election. The volume also includes a public statement Trump released the night before January 6 claiming he and Pence were on the same page about the congressional certification, Trump’s prepared remarks for his speech on January 6, and fundraising emails sent out by his 2020 campaign in the days before January 6.

Pence’s letter to Congress on January 6 explaining why he could not reject certifying the election and a transcript of Trump’s 2023 CNN town hall are also included in the documents.

The redacted files were expected to include an array of materials, including grand jury transcripts and notes from FBI interviews conducted during the yearslong investigation.

This was a big news dump week.  Hopefully, the death of Yahya Sinwar will lead to a peaceful conclusion to this latest Mid-Eastern War.  I’m not sure that’s what Bibi wants, but I’m sure the return of the hostages and a ceasefire would be a good start to ending hostilities.  This is from Reuters. “Yahya Sinwar threw stick at drone just before death, according to Israel video. “

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was tracked by an Israeli mini drone as he lay dying in the ruins of a building in southern Gaza and filmed him slumped in a chair covered in dust, according to video released by Israeli authorities on Thursday.
As the drone hovered nearby, the video showed him throwing a stick at it, in an apparent act of desperation or defiance. Not long afterwards, the military said, a tank shell was fired into the building.
After an intensive manhunt that had lasted for more than a year, the Israeli troops that killed Sinwar were initially unaware that they had caught their country’s number one enemy after a gun battle on Wednesday, Israeli officials said.
Dental records, fingerprints and DNA testing provided final confirmation of Sinwar’s death for Israel and on Friday, Hamas confirmed their leader had been killed.
Intelligence services had been gradually restricting the area where Sinwar could operate, the military said. But unlike other militant leaders tracked down by Israel, including Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on July 13, the encounter which finally killed Sinwar was not a planned and targeted strike, or an operation carried out by elite commandos.
The seven days of Sukkot started last night. The Jewish Harvest Holiday lasts 7 days, and I’m sure there will be much celebration that there will be one less terrorist plotting another atrocity like October 7th. May all who observe find it in their hearts to search for peace and reconciliation with Israel’s innocent Palestinian neighbors.  You would think eventually, we would all be way over all those who try to turn neighbors against each other.  I know I’m hopeful we can get a better outcome here if we all just get out and vote for Kamala and Tim.
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