Matthew Blanchette

Anything worse than R+9 (for the GOP) and six more retirements are announced before I take my next crap.

Every Democrat who's ever wanted to donate or run in a race where the odds were stacked in their favor is going to look at this & say "this is my chance, let's start making calls & collecting signatures". Makes the whole party's job 10 times easier

We also get the benefit of absolute goofballs who win in these kinds of election cycles. Rep-elect Doofus McGee wins in a +7 Ohio seat after spending $3,200 and we find out the degree he claimed was from an actual clown college.

You mean capturing that big dummy Winfield Scott?

College Humor had my favorite take. No one really won but the losers were clearly the Native Americans.

The US lost nothing and actually gained parts of Florida, Britain put us firmly in our place, and the Natives went on to suffer everything the US did to the natives.

"Go on..."

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In a weird way I feel like Costco is one of the last megacompanies that actually practices capitalism as its supposed to work

I feel like one of the most underrated explanations for what's happening right now in global politics is that almost everyone has lost their minds.

Call me naive

And this has been picking up more play than most of his other pardons. But I find it amazing that this doesn’t blow up on him.

There was a Bond movie with a sequence involving helicopters that cut down trees.

They cut a caviar factory to pieces.

Statehood for D.C. is an ethical obligation at this point, required to protect the rights of our residents to govern ourselves against such out-of-state troops being sent to patrol our city.

William Kempe - Wikipedia

Are we human, or are we Will Kempe? :-o

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...

“Follow-up question. Sir, what day is it?”

I looked up when Hannukah is, then briefly saw an apparition of the mind-ghost once known as "Kwanzaa" before remembering that he has probably declared its observation to be punishable by death... Nope, this one is straight Alzheimers.

I hear “. . . great holiday, we, we’ve done a great job . . .” And that’s just as weird because it’s December 2, not a holiday in sight AND WE KNOW he hates saying happy holidays.

Maybe he's a big fan of St. Nicholas's feast day?

Cory Booker fumbling Rosario Dawson and then finding the woman on Earth who looks the most like Rosario Dawson and marrying her instead is very Pluribus coded.

FREE DOV

Who's Dov?

There is a project that we have been slowly working towards this year. We call it The Reconstruction Papers. This will be a special edition of our publication with a print run, making it easier for people to hand it around in influential circles. We will draw on a wide variety of subject matter experts in political science, higher education, media studies, and more. These experts will write about how to not only repair the damage that has been done in their area of focus, but how to rebuild and reform into something better than we started with. One of our core commitments at Liberal Currents is not only to be against the forces of reaction, but for a forward-facing liberalism. The Reconstruction Papers is an extension of our eight-year-long mission to provide the intellectual foundation for a liberal future, rather than wallowing in memories of a liberal past.

Yesterday we teased The Reconstruction Papers, a project we will work on if we met our funding goal. Why do we think this project is necessary? www.liberalcurrents.com/a-preview-of...

"We're going to watch Laputa."

Ghilbi fans: "Oooh, vintage! That's a good one."
Spanish speakers: "...Que?"

Kevin Rudd served as Australia’s 26th Prime Minister from 2007 to 2010, then as Minister for Foreign Affairs, before a second term as Prime Minister in 2013. In March 2023, Kevin Rudd assumed his role as Australia’s Ambassador to the United States in Washington DC. Kevin is recognised as a leading analyst of China and, prior to his ambassadorship, served from as the inaugural President of the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York from 2015. In 2020, he was appointed President and CEO of the Asia Society globally and, in 2022, he founded the Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. Kevin’s new book, On Xi Jinping: How Xi's Marxist Nationalism is Shaping China and the World, is based on his Oxford doctoral thesis. It is published by Oxford University Press.

Kevin started his diplomatic career in 1981 with postings to Beijing and Stockholm. In 1988, he was appointed Chief of Staff to the Hon. Wayne Goss and served him as Premier of Queensland. He was Director-General of the Cabinet Office from 1991 to 1995, and Senior China Consultant for KPMG from 1996 to 1998. He graduated with Honours in Asian Studies from the Australian National University and received his PhD from Oxford University in 2022. He also studied at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei. Kevin is accompanied in Washington DC by his wife, Thérèse Rein. They are the proud parents of three, and grandparents of three.

Unlike Europe, which after the Thirty Years’ War hit upon the Westphalian model of collective security among states of roughly equal size, Asia has always been a hierarchy of countries with China at its top. This remains the case today.

Mr Keating labelled the island "Chinese real estate" on 7.30, when talking about Australia's defence pact with the US. "What this is all about is the Chinese laying claim to Taiwan, and the Americans are going to say 'no, no, we're going to keep these Taiwanese people protected', even though they're sitting on Chinese real estate," he said. Asked about the wishes of the Taiwanese people, and China's threat to dismantle civil society in the country, Mr Keating told 7.30 Taiwan was not a vital Australian interest.

Which way, former Labor Prime Minister?

When "Laputa" in "Gulliver's Travels" clicked for all the kids who knew Spanish... :-D

I once decided to teach The Country Wife to my college English freshmen, and once they understood china, were laughing as we read that scene aloud. Mission accomplished.

Screenshot of a skeet with a link to Aphra Behn’s Wikipedia page. The preview image shows part of a portrait of her: her upper body, from just above her low-cut dress up to her nose, leaving out her eyes and the upper part of her head.

“Hey Wikipedia preview image — my eyes are up here!”

Aphra Behn - Wikipedia

I am not sure I had seen Aftyn Behn’s first name until a few moments ago, but when I did, you can be sure I misread it and did a double take.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphra_B...

Love me some Aphra Behn! She wrote what I think must be the first love poem in English from a woman to a woman; and it's a corker, too! www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50479/...

A gorgeous writer. "All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds." (V Woolf)