679 Comments

Kathy Hochul: did she learn anything good from Mario Cuomo? Why NY Democrats? I worry for your state right now. From Quorum.us:

.

"Out of 98 partisan legislative chambers, Republicans control 57 chambers. Democrats control 41 in 2023. In total, Republicans control 22 states and Democrats control 17, with state control defined as a state where the upper chamber, lower chamber, and governor seat are all held by the same party. 10 states have divided government."

Expand full comment

I posted that NYT story about Esmeralda County last night.

Must credit Biff!

Expand full comment

Thanks! I read that story last night, it left me feeling very very sad.

Expand full comment

Am I having a stroke or is that the same he'd gif as yesterday?

Expand full comment

Ahem- June 4th. Cancel the doc appt!

Expand full comment

Let's not argue and bicker about 'oo used what gif and when...

Expand full comment

Nope! Not me! 'Sides - it's pretty good!

Expand full comment

😆

Expand full comment

goddammit. I have GOT to go back and recheck what Evan's used

Expand full comment

better see a doctor, yesterday was a bouncing kitten!

Expand full comment

LOL. I knew it was a stroke!

Expand full comment

Hello my Most Gorgeous Queen and Editrix...came by to say "Thank you" for the kittehs in Heds....you are beneficent and indulgent to us mere Wonks!

Expand full comment

Instagram link, someone put a camera on their kitty and these are pictures from a play session with a little orange kitten. So sweet.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7g0QtTg4CP/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Expand full comment

I always wanted to put a camera on my cat, but the technology was not there yet. She used to climb up to a first floor roof that ran the length of our townhouse row, and was overlooked by the second floor master bedrooms. I would see her peer into our bedroom, and then peer into the rest all down the row.

Expand full comment

The Tiedrich link is worth it just for the video at the end of the article.

Expand full comment

Aw, the story about Tig Notaro's kids was cute.

Expand full comment

The Tig Notaro story cracked me up.

Expand full comment

That "Luciferinda" piece was disturbingly batscheiss. Places like this actually exist? And why?

Expand full comment

I understand that the crazy lady recently lost her husband and seems to be more disconnected from reality than ever and looking for some kind of purpose in life... but REALLY, THIS?

"Trump didn't win ALL the votes in my community, so there must have been fraud?" is just next level stupidity. And to think, that *if* you DID had the capacity to flip votes, you would go to some podunk town in Nevada to steal 15% of 400 votes... NO YOU STUPID WOMAN... you'd use that capacity to flip WAY more votes in a precinct with thousands of voters and where it would actually matter.

Everything about her reasoning for questioning the local clerk is just completely deranged and idiotic. The most annoying thing about these people is that their capacity for critical thinking is so stunted, they have no concept of how fucking wrong and stupid they are at every level.

Expand full comment

Loose Cannon will hold her hearing, give the wingnutz ample time to babble, then ... in month ... or so ... you know, eventually, give the actual correct answer that Jack Smith is a legal person. Delay is her assigned task, and her Fed Suk handlers are going to continue this until she gets removed . Then they will appeal to the SCrOTUS.

Expand full comment

Ref the article about public hearings…the trouble is that “traditional” Democrats, the ones who have been around a while and are in charge, are genteel old (mostly) men, who want things to be solved without conflict, preferably before the Early Bird dinner special at the Congressional Canteen. While the traditional Republicans have either been cancelled out of Congress, or are self-serving enough that they have sold their souls to Assmouth. We need to get rid of the gerontocracy.

Expand full comment

Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez.

https://x.com/edwinhayward/status/1799058928732705145

Here's the full 6+ minute interview. If you read the transcript from the previous tweet, the content will be familiar already.

But it's only by viewing it that Rishi Sunak's robotic lack of feeling, emotion or recognition truly sinks in.

Expand full comment

Wow, powerful words.

https://x.com/academic_la/status/1798884029963604395 ---

Israel has not learned the proper lessons from October 7. The most common narrative is that we were too soft on Hamas. Shouldn’t have withdrawn from Gaza. Shouldn’t have created the PA. Etc.

That makes sense on a superficial level. But it misses the deeper point. October 7 didn’t happen because we tried to make peace. It happened because we FAILED to make peace.

We haven’t had a serious attempt to make peace since 2008. That is more than 15 years ago and not coincidentally, the year before Netanyahu took over.

Since then Israel has practiced divide and conquer, letting Hamas rule Gaza and the PA rule the West Bank. The Shalit deal and the funding of Hamas through Qatar strengthened Hamas which practiced terrorism at the expense of the PA which tried to use diplomatic means like going to the UN and the ICJ. Meanwhile, Israel built settlements and designing its entire policy to deny a Palestinian state.

The simplest explanation for October 7, Occam’s Razor, is lack of peace. We need to stop rewarding terrorism by giving Hamas deals and ignoring the PA. Reward moderation rather than extremism. Stop building settlements and shout from the rooftops that we are willing to make peace.

The run up to October 7th was not a bunch of Israeli concessions. It was an unwillingness to talk. Israel has learned the wrong lessons from all this.

Expand full comment

"We haven’t had a serious attempt to make peace since 2008." The nth rejection by the Palestinian side persuaded enough Israelis that the Palestinians will never ever ever accept any peace that there has not been a willingness to try since then.

Expand full comment

So it is eternal war then.

And note: what you attribute here to all Palestinians could easily also be said about the 30, 40% of the Israeli population who have no problem voting for politicians that more or less openly support ring wing settler terror in the Westbank, and even look away when right wing terrorists go after Israeli citizens.

Expand full comment

There are certainly 30-40% of Israelis who support the extreme right wing, but there are 60-70% of Palestinians who support the mass murders, gang rapes, and kidnappings committed on October 7.

These kinds of wars do not have to be eternal. The Nazi and State Shinto movements could not have committed their cruelties without broad support in German and Japanese societies, and this is why intense warfare that inevitably involved heavy civilian casualties were required to overthrow those dominant cultures-- but this did not last forever, did not require exterminating the whole populations of those countries, and was in the long run better for the Germans and Japanese to abandon their murderous forms of nationalism. And it is by no means unfair to compare Hamas to the Axis: their charter proudly proclaims themselves the institutional continuation of groups that allied with Germany in the 30s and 40s; they are in a literal sense the last branch of the Axis that is still fighting.

Expand full comment

The problem with those 30,40% is that they are much better equipped with weapons than those 60,70%.

And note: the 30,40% were maybe 5,10% at max some decades back. This mindset is cancerous ... and it eats up Israels soul.

Expand full comment

Some decades there was faith among the majority of Israelis that the Palestinians would eventually agree to peace. It has become clear that the exterminationists among the Palestinians completely control the culture, and that nothing can change until the Palestinian leadership is destroyed.

Expand full comment

The "lessons" Israel learned are precisely the ones that would allow the policies of the Netanyahu government--which are responsible for Oct. 7 in the first place--to continue if not accelerate. The lesson it should learn is that jailing Bibi is patriotic and essential.

Expand full comment

It's very tempting to say that I hate DeSantis, Alito, Abbot, and, of course, Trump. But hate involves a lot of personal energy which these subhumans don't deserve. May I suggest that a better word is "loathe"? It costs little or no personal energy, and contains the implication that the target does not deserve to be considered human.

Expand full comment

While also wishing that they can find enlightenment in some future life.

Expand full comment

My personal feelings are that I desire to piss on all of their graves sequentially following meals of asparagus and diuretics.

Expand full comment

This is the argument I make when they say I'm consumed with hate for Trump. Hate implies I have an emotional investment of any sort in Trump. I have contempt for those people not any personal feeling inside of me.

Expand full comment

Yep, hate is an investment. Generally I use "disdain" for those not worthy of my hatred.

Expand full comment

If hating Cheetolini is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Expand full comment

"Loathe" is good.

Expand full comment

Subhuman is actually Nazi language; decent people shouldn't use it for good reason.

Thing is: we all are humans; even the most flawed ones.

The second you open the door for "you aren't a human any more because X", you open the door for all sorts of real world crimes.

It's basic mental hygiene. Do not go there, for your own sake.

Expand full comment

i felt bad yesterday for just this reason when i wondered whether some people were even human.

AND also, they're REALLY BAD HUMANS.

Expand full comment

Yes....best response is to send energy for them to change and to mess them up WITH VOTES!

Expand full comment

I'd go with "Fucked-up human."

Expand full comment

Good point, defpac. I'll go with Hamilton's proposal or something similar henceforth.

Expand full comment

No objections here.

Expand full comment

Lyz has some words about your Dingus of The Week, and this week's choice could be a dingus for *every* week.

𝐃𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤: 𝐃𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐝 𝐅𝐫𝐮𝐦

“Charisma” is definitely not serving as any kind of euphemism coming from David Frum, that famous advocate of women, whose feminist credentials include criticizing Hillary Clinton’s smile and assuming that Susan Collins asked for Mitch McConnell’s permission before she cast a vote calling for additional witnesses during Trump’s first impeachment trial.

When you are in a fight with Susan Collins and she is in the right, you ought to know that you’ve really messed up. But not David Frum! He will simply never learn! He actually made a bunch of writers for The Federalist mad in 2020 when he posted a tweet that ignored the fact that the conservative magazine had a lot of women on staff who were pro-Trump. And while America remains a very divided place, it seems the right and the left can agree that David Frum is sexist. You almost have to admire that level of commitment to misogyny.

https://lyz.substack.com/p/axis-of-snivel

Expand full comment

Hell, I knew David Frum was wrong back in 2002.

Expand full comment

Yes, it is known.

Expand full comment

That owl is looking vexed, and purposeful...

Hmmm, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘝𝘦𝘹𝘦𝘥 𝘖𝘸𝘭 sounds like the tavern featured in a -meh- fantasy novel, where the protagonists mix with the NPCs and discover their quest to recover the MacGuffin...

Expand full comment

If he wouldn't be a tory, one could almost feel sorry for Sunak. He is like the Charlie Brown of politics, just that he is an asshole, and it ain't Lucy taking away the ball, but he does it to himself.

https://x.com/edwinhayward/status/1798984936386593239

Rishi Sunak's Big D-Day Snub - A Definitive Thread...

Rishi Sunak skipped out on the main D-Day commemorations yesterday to rush home and record an ITN interview that won't even air until Wednesday next week.

Expand full comment

Dude puts a LOT of effort into being embarrassingly wrong at every turn.

Lindsay Graham makes it look effortless and Rishi tries way more than he needs to

Expand full comment