Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Everybody saw this coming.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

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52Comments

  4. 4.

    Cliff

    The cartoon’s a little inaccurate. The monkey should be riding the elephant around like a sex slave.

  5. 5.

    Violet

    @demo woman:
    The light from the computer screen may be too much for him. He’d probably welcome room darkening shades.

    Drink lots of water, John!

  7. 7.

    Bruuuuce

    @Cliff: More like The Old Man of the Island, out of the Tales of Sindbad (you know, the one who got on and couldn’t be pried off).

  8. 8.

    J sub D

    China is far ahead of the US in the development of clean energy.

    China is the world’s largest emitter of CO2.

    China’s GDP is less than one third than that of the United States.

    One of these statements has to be complete bullshit. Can you guess which?

  9. 9.

    demo woman

    @J sub D: The right wing should spend their time ranting about the fact that China is developing clean energy. We’re number one, we’re number one. Oh yeah, clean energy is just voodoo science. They would rather spend their money supporting Saudi Arabia.

  10. 10.

    Mark S.

    I’m not too worried. I’m sure Lily and Rosie are nursing Cole back to health as we speak.

  11. 11.

    WWasse

    ‎”Nonprofit Hospital” charges $800 JUST for the doc to read the results of the ultrasound test. Time spent: Between 4 and 0.5 minutes. That’s an hourly billing rate of $12,000 to $96,000. Betcha the Wall Street law firms are jealous.

    Olberman line: Being hospitalized is like being in a huge cash register. Any interact yields an enormous “ka-ching.”

  12. 12.

    Tonal Crow

    @J sub D: (2) and (3) are facts. (1) is open to a wide variety of interpretations, some of which are arguable, so it’s not “complete bullshit”. For example, China’s wind-power growth rate far exceeds the U.S.’s. Also, it’s far (far!) ahead of us in solar heating (not solar PV). But at the the same time, it’s adding much more coal generation capacity than we are.

  13. 13.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mark S.: Sure, the dogs are helping out, but Tunch is the one that worries me. I figure Tunch finally had his opportunity last night.

  16. 16.

    Tonal Crow

    @demo woman: Wingnuts like to support Saudi Arabia because SA promotes terrorism (mostly perped by Islamist wingnuts), which wingnuts then use as an excuse to destroy our liberty and STEAL MY TAX DOLLARS FROM MY WALLET to swell the military-industrial complex, which then returns the favor by hiring wingnuts. It’s win/win/win/win/win for wingnuts. Of all stripes.

  17. 17.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Tonal Crow: I don’t think it is a conspiracy in a legal sense (as in involving two or more conspirators), I think Tunch is going to do it, or has done it, on his own. I mean look at the size of him, do you think he needs help?

  20. 20.

    bemused

    @demo woman:
    I think some of the most fascinating photos and videos of George Bush during his reign of destruction were Bush with the Saudi Prince (visit to Crawford), the hand holding in particular. Bush always looked like he had utter disdain for everyone else, cocky and condescending. With the Saudi prince, Bush was all solicitation and not a smirk in sight. The only other time I remember Bush without his cowboy swagger was when he was sitting in the classroom on 9/11.

  27. 27.

    JenJen

    Desperate to win Saturday (just guessing here), our shameless friends over at Politico attempt to ramp up the Cordoba House issue by constructing from whole cloth a claim that the President has backed away from his comments yesterday (via TPM). You’ll note that they essentially construct a stance the President never took, and then use that to sledgehammer him. At first I thought “just another day with the weekend crew at Politico”, but this really is audacious.

    Read the whole thing, but this is a good observation and question from Josh:

    This was in response to the president himself clearly making this distinction. He’s not getting into the identity of the builders or whether he agrees the exact placement. They have the right to build on private property. We’re Americans. We’d don’t discriminate on the basis of religion. Even the AP, more accurately, refers to the president “expanding” on his statement, though perhaps better to say ‘countering willful distortion.’ The CBS version of the AP story says he “expounded” on the issue. (ABC was a bit in Politico’s direction, though nearly as egregious.) Even with the aim of selling copy and appealing to its core readership’s biases, this stands out as a troubling example of organized lying on the part of Politico’s editors. It will be interesting to see who else follows their line.

    It will be interesting, but it probably won’t be surprising.

  28. 28.

    demo woman

    @JenJen: I’m sure that I’m not alone in my disdain for those spinning stories for their own benefit. Hell is to good of a place for them.

  29. 29.

    morzer

    @JenJen:

    Politico? Lying? Fabricating a story? Whoring out to far-right extremists and domestic terrorists? Surely not!

    Where are my pearls? I feel the need to clutch them as reality shifts beneath me!

  32. 32.

    JenJen

    @demo woman: @morzer: As loathsome as I think most of us find the entire Politico machine, truly, this entry stands out. Josh is right; it’s organized lying. There are no two ways about it.

    And, just watched the President in Florida on CNN, answering Ed Henry’s follow-up, and the entire exchange further illustrates how craven Politico is being here.

    ETA: I’m gonna go all Amateur Left here and say that the President’s interaction with the press, and his answer to Henry’s question, reminds me why I voted for the guy in the first place.

  35. 35.

    J sub D

    Coal production by country (2005)
    # 1 China: ——2,204,729,000 ton
    # 2 United States: 531,822,000 ton

    So China produces (and burns) 4X the coal that the US does while just now (last month?) surpassing the US in total energy use.

    “Green” energy leaders my ass.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see a global carbon emissions tax with verification requirements to prevent (or at least keep to manageble levels) cheating. Unfortunately reality rears its ugly head here and growls “Ain’t Gonna. Happen”.

    This leads to some very uncomfortable conclusions. If the US (or the west) were to unilaterally adopt more expensive energy producing technologies they would place themselves at at a huge competitive disadvantage in energy intensive businesses with those in countries that continue to use cheaper fossile fuels. The loss of manufacturing jobs to places like China, India, Indonesia etc. will only accelerate and CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will continue to increase despite our self sacrificial good intentions.

    More and more I’m leaning to global climate engineering technologies to counter the greenhouse gas problem (not that that is problem free solution by any stretch of the imagination).

    Oh yeah, we should streamline the whole building a fission plant process and start producing electricity that way. Phase out the coal fired plants and replace them with modern breeder reactors (for all practical purposes, renewable energy). While still more expensive than burning coal, it’s not prohibitively so.

    Behind all of this is the fact that there are 3 billion energy poor people on the planet who will not remain so in order to prevent AGW.

    Reality sucks and life’s a bitch.

  36. 36.

    morzer

    @J sub D:

    Had you considered that China has about five times the population that the US does? Also, that they are still catching up on many fronts in terms of their industrial base and technological stock. These things ought to be part of your analysis.

  38. 38.

    J sub D

    My previous was directed at Tonal Crow who appears rational on the subject of energy/environmental/economic policy (a rare trait on the intertubez).

  39. 39.

    J sub D

    @morzer: Had you considered that China has about five times the population that the US does? Also, that they are still catching up on many fronts in terms of their industrial base and technological stock. These things ought to be part of your analysis.

    Yeah. That’s why I brought up the figures in relation to total energy priduction. China burns 4X the coal the US does for the same amount of energy. And the US, for economic and irrational environmentalist reasons, burns far too much.

  40. 40.

    JenJen

    Finally watched the Anderson Cooper – Rep. Gohmert “Terror Babies” exchange, and would like to nominate the following Gohmert quote as a Balloon-Juice tagline:

    The explosions will not happen for 10, 15, 20 years.

    Honorable Mention:

    I’m an easy target. You and Jon Stewart can have your fun!

    At first I didn’t truly believe this lunatic was a US Congressman. I figured he had to be retired, or maybe in the Statehouse, or something. Wrong-o.

  42. 42.

    bemused

    @Pasquinade:
    Awesome. I can’t believe I missed seeing that.
    But we must never forget that Obama bowing to foreign leaders was beyond the pale.

  43. 43.

    Svensker

    Does anyone have any idea why Rush had a Marine Honor Guard at his wedding? Did the taxpayers pay for it? WTF?

  46. 46.

    morzer

    @dan:

    The person who really writes the GOP-fellating nonsense peddled by Politico journalists? Hence blo and ghost.

  50. 50.

    Anne Laurie

    @debit: There have been so many adorable pet pictures on Balloon Juice, but Chloe and (Stuck’s) Charlie are my all-favorites. (Thank goodness I don’t have to pick just one!) And the more I-are-too-cute-not-to-be-naughty pics of Chloe I see (like “Took care of that cat vomit for you”), the more I am convinced your little stinker is part Papillon, aka the best breed in all the world. Not that I’m prejudiced, she said, looking over at her three little PapFiends…

  51. 51.

    Mike in NC

    Loonie Tunes pretty much says it all for the teabaggers, though the theme from Benny Hill might also work. Too.

  52. 52.

    debit

    @Anne Laurie: Thank you! I don’t know if she’s typical of the breed (she sure doesn’t seem like a typical JRT) but she is the smartest, sweetest dog I’ve ever had. I was so lucky that day in January when I met her.

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