SD Gov. Kristi Noem is getting a roasting over her depiction of killing a backwards "untrainable" puppy as well as a smelly goat that came from her political memoir No Going Back: Descriptive Stuff After the Hyphen. A lot of people on social media are posting pictures of their own good doggos--and that's great. But to give her her due, sometimes a dog just is either traumatized or dimwitted, or for some other reason has misplaced aggression issues, and they aren't fit to their environment. You could try rehoming them with a family--hopefully in a "single pet, no small children" situati ..read more

  In today's SCOTUS hearing, Samuel Alito argued that immunity for former presidents is good, actually, because without it, ex-presidents might refuse to leave office peacefully if they lose reelection... Make it make sense. https://t.co/HepJVcgN2Q — Mother Jones (@MotherJones) April 25, 2024 If I were to take Justice Alito as a good-faith interrogator adhering to the actual facts of the Trump presidency--the actual president this case is about, and not some future generic president we're just having a classroom thought-experiment about, are we supposed to play along and imagine a path ..read more

  Trump's trial, in a way, involves a bit of myth-making--today we learned that, per an agreement between Trump and David Pecker of the National Enquirer, stories were placed in the paper regarding Trump's 2016 political opponents that were wholly false. So if you were wondering about Ted Cruz's dad, the mad assassin, or Marco Rubio's love child, well--they were bogus. This puts a real damper on the idea that the 'catch and kill" part of the deal, where the public did not read negative stories about Trump's wayward libido had something to do with Trump's desire to protect his family--it ..read more

  Alina Habba gives a masterclass on how to saw celery. pic.twitter.com/XwUBmcGt2P — Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 22, 2024 Seeing how this woman cuts celery makes me wonder if she decided it was better for her knives to be cute than sharp, because she could fake sharp (avoiding the obvious "sharpest knife in the drawer" joke). It also explains why she gets her carrots pre-cut.   I don't know that how someone cuts celery tells us deep things about them. Maybe it doesn't. But I watched that more than a couple of times.  ..read more

  Yesterday, the US House of Representatives finally passed a measure to send military aid to Ukraine after months of delay: With an overwhelming vote, the $61 billion in aid for Ukraine passed in a matter of minutes, a strong showing as American lawmakers race to deliver a fresh round of U.S. support to the war-torn ally. Many Democrats cheered on the House floor and waved blue-and-yellow flags of Ukraine. Aid to Israel and the other allies also won approval by healthy margins, as did a measure to clamp down on the popular platform TikTok, with unique coalitions forming to push the se ..read more

  Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes says he has hundreds of thousands of smaller MAGA investors in Trump Media, and they are calling him asking why the stock is tanking, so he filed a complaint with the SEC and says Biden is conspiring with Wall Street bankers to screw him. pic.twitter.com/ZxTEmxeN0J — Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 20, 2024 Something about Truth Social puts me in one of those "can't place where all the emotion is coming from" moods, somewhat akin to when Trump gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Art Laffer. I guess it's my strong feeling that shitty economics t ..read more

  You are supposed to pity Trump at this point, the miserable wretch that he is, made to sit by his enemies in a freezing cold courtroom morning until night. But is the room literally cold, or just figuratively cold--a place where being faced with people who truly don't care for his demeanor, his policies or anything else about him say that pretty much to his face, where he is obliged to say nothing? I can certainly imagine a few reasons for a little shiver down his back.  It's not that Trump doesn't have friends in low places, like Fox News, who won't help him try to tamper with th ..read more

  JUST IN: The Senate has killed a second article of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, ending the House GOP-led efforts to oust him https://t.co/rQYK9hn0cb — CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) April 17, 2024 Republicans can say whatever they like about precedent and whether the vote has an impact on future impeachments (I say this just means they shouldn't be proposed frivolously without an actual crime or misdemeanor--and for a bad precedent, they can look to the two times they failed to convict Trump of things he absolutely did). Democrats just spared the abs ..read more

  Kari Lake called on her supporters in Arizona to arm themselves ahead of an “intense” period leading up to the election. “We are going to put on the armor of God, and maybe strap on a Glock on the side of us just in case.” The crowd roared its approval.https://t.co/otBB7H2mkK — Chris Cameron (@ChrisCameronNYT) April 17, 2024 Having spent something like a year a 3/4ths insisting she actually wone the contest for AZ governor and only appeared to have lost due to voter fraud rather than conspicuous own goals like eschewing the support of "John McCain Republicans", has now decided to show ..read more

  Maybe other things happened at Trump's first day of his first criminal trial, but the apparently most notable thing was that he appeared to nod off a few times. This prompted the ever-loving internet to change his nickname from Don Poorleone to Don Snoreleone (The Nodfather!), some wags to ponder if Trump wasn't loaded up with Xanax to keep from going ape, and Trump to give the stankeye to Maggie Haberman, who was the one who caught whispering to his chest hairs. It's a pretty bad look for Trump, who once murdered Jeb Bush with the term "low-energy" and whose worst nickname for Preside ..read more