Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

You cannot shame the shameless.

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

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

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Open Thread

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Parents are off to an anniversary dinner (their 42nd!), and I have Ginny and Guesly. No rest for the wicked.

*** Update ***

We have our own official Balloon Juice Fantasy Football league:

Hey all you Juicers! I like football. Who else likes football?

NFL week 1 is coming up fast, and I thought it’d be a kick to have a fantasy football league for regulars at Balloon Juice. With the blessings of our host I’ve created the B-J.F.L. A little competitive action to spice up football Open Threads throughout the season!

Totally free to join and play – all you need is a Yahoo ID. If you’ve never played Fantasy Football before, here’s a primer:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/sports/fantasysports/football/rules/frules-01.html

If that sounds good to you, or you already know what fantasy football is and want to get in the mix, sign up here:
http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/league/b_jfl

If the direct link doesn’t work for you go to Yahoo and find their Fantasy Sports page, and look for League # 616924

The password to join is “alsotoo.”

I think the limit is 20 teams, and the league draft will be Tuesday evening. You’ll be able to draft your players online, or let Yahoo do it for you.

A quick word about me, your Commissioner. I’ve been a regular lurker and sometime commenter for years, using the handle “mattt.” I’m no football expert and don’t plan on posting lots of commentary, but have run fantasy leagues before and thought some of you all might get a kick out of one here.

Because if there’s one thing we’re short of on this blog, it’s trash talk!

My team is Tunch’s Furballs.

Reader Interactions

92Comments

  1. 1.

    schrodinger's cat

    Poor Tunch!
    What Tunch is thinking…
    Ceiling Cat what has I done, my life seems to be overrun with goggies. Someone has to pay for this.

  3. 3.

    Tlazolteotl

    My parents had their 48th in June. Congratulations to your folks! As the great philosopher Andre3000 said:

    “Thank God for mom and dad for keeping two together ’cause we don’t know how”

  4. 4.

    licensed to kill time

    I have wondered where Bill E Pilgrim is lately. I miss his funny comments and wordplay.

  8. 8.

    Mark S.

    It must be nice always being able to construct one’s own reality. Here’s the moron Palin endorsed in the Alaska Senate primary:

    “It concerns us any time somebody lawyers up and tries to pull an Al Franken, if you will. We are very concerned that there may be some attempt here to skew the results.”

    Some people might remember that it was Franken’s opponent who challenged the result for months.

  10. 10.

    Jewish Steel

    Congrats to your parents!

    They were married the year I was born.

    I go to pick up our first foster basenji tomorrow. Strangely, it prompted me to shave. I felt I should put my best foot forward for someone who wouldn’t mind if I was naked and hadn’t shaved for 3 years.

  11. 11.

    tworivers

    Stupidest Movie Title Ever:

    With Six You Get Egg Roll.

    C.H.U.D. (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers) is probably a close second

  12. 12.

    General Stuck

    I hope now our progressive friends have had a good cry with Obama fail over appointing sexist wingnuts and putting granny on a catfood diet, so as we can return to normal, whatever the fuck that is.

  19. 19.

    General Stuck

    The Reds are up four on the Cards going into the homestretch. Hell with a bunch a football, for now.

  20. 20.

    Jim C

    At the library today, I picked up Barry Eisler’s Inside Out.

    If it’s not a white-knuckle roller-coaster ride, I’m blaming this blog.

  21. 21.

    ricky

    Fantasy Football? Bull. Fantasy sex is usually more hands on.

    You drafting the fat quarterback that likes his ladies young and on the pool table?

  23. 23.

    schrodinger's cat

    Can we have a video of the puppies playing together?

    While Tunch glares at them from his perch?

  24. 24.

    jl

    And how come Cole was able to get Tunch on his team even before the draft?

    This thing hasn’t even started and there is already a scandal.

  25. 25.

    Josie

    Congratulations to your parents. According to my youngest son’s opinion, they are in a minority. A few years ago, when he was in college, he signed up for a psychology survey designed for people whose parents had been married for 30 years or more. He said they were begging for people since they couldn’t find enough eligible students.

  27. 27.

    Mnemosyne

    @Josie:

    Considering the age of most college students, I’m not surprised they had a hard time finding people. Why would they think it would be easy to find parents of 20-year-olds who had been married for 30+ years?

  28. 28.

    NobodySpecial

    So I’m in this thing, but I wonder if beating Cole like a drum leads to getting booted off the site.

    Well, that’s not really an issue with me. But I worry about the rest of you.

  29. 29.

    jeffreyw

    @schrodinger’s cat: Sure! Pre heat oven w stone to 500, put stuff on Lebanese pita bread, bake it on the stone, take it out when done. I recommend my super secret pizza sauce under sausage and mushrooms, with some fresh mozz or brie on top.

  30. 30.

    Violet

    @Josie:
    Yeah, the kids that signed up would all have to be the youngest kids in the family or their parents would have had to wait a long time to have them.
    @schrodinger’s cat:

    While Tunch glares at them from his perch?

    Yes! We haven’t had a Tunch action shot in awhile.

  33. 33.

    Josie

    @Violet: You know, I hadn’t really thought of it that way, but both things were true of my son. Maybe that was the direction of the survey.

  34. 34.

    WereBear

    I had to rebuild my Firefox Profile. The instructions are good, the procedure is tedious. Someone on here said to put in NoScript; so I did, and the whole thing blew up.

    I blame someone.

  37. 37.

    schrodinger's cat

    @jeffreyw: Ok 2 more questions? Where can I find the recipe for the super secret sauce? and how do you keep the crust from getting soggy, which is a problem whenever I make a pizza.

  38. 38.

    marcopolo

    So I come home from a long day at work and check the local news and see this little news dropping:

    Cardinals first baseman and three-time NL Most Valuable Player Albert Pujols will be among several honorees at a highly publicized and potentially politically charged Saturday morning rally expected to draw more than 20,000 to The Mall.

    Now I am not the biggest Cardinal fan in St. Louis by far but I do did enjoy sitting back with a beer and watching the occasional game this year. This pretty much ruins that.

    Beck, who met Pujols at Busch Stadium before a June appearance at Chaifetz Arena, is promoting the event as an apolitical celebration of the First Amendment and the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, scheduled to introduce Pujols, insisted Thursday that he and Pujols are attending only after receiving assurances that the event is not a thinly disguised political rally.

    Needless to say, the Cardinals haven’t been playing the best baseball during the second half of this season and you would think that the team manager and one of the top players would be more interested in keeping their heads in the game than flying off to this wingnut whackfest.

    All this St. Louisan is left with is Go Reds!

  40. 40.

    Bnut

    @marcopolo:
    You would think. Larussa is considered the genius of baseball bc he has a JD from Florida State. He’s a teabagger. Enough said. I’ve heard rumors of Pujols giving a pro-immigration speech at the rally.

  42. 42.

    Crusty Dem

    Damn, I really wanted to name my team “The hammer is my penis” in honor of this, too many damn characters.

  45. 45.

    The Commish (mattt)

    D’oh! I almost missed the update announcing the league I’m commissionering! 13 teams signed up already….cool!

    Yahoo does a good job spelling things out but if anybody has questions just post ’em.

    About the draft – even if you expect to be online for the draft Tuesday evening I suggest adjusting your player rankings via Yahoo, just in case you can’t make it or have tech issues.

    Depending on how many people sign up I may adjust the roster sizes before the draft. If we have 20 people rosters will get smaller so the talent is not spread too thin.

    Good luck,

    the Commish

  46. 46.

    drew42

    Sorry, can’t. At one point around 10 years ago, I was so obsessed that I belonged to three fantasy football leagues at once (it’s really stressful to root for and against the same player in a game).

    Nearly lost my job over it, so I quit cold turkey.

  47. 47.

    jeffreyw

    @schrodinger’s cat: The sauce is easy enough. It was still on the tomato vine this morning. Run the tomatoes through a juicer and set the liquid to boiling atop the stove. Take a couple of carrots and run them through the food processor, the same with an onion. Dump that into the pot. Add three bay leaves, some red pepper flakes. Mince a head of garlic, and three ribs of celery, toss that in. Strip the needles from three sprigs of rosemary, chop those up some more. Same for a few sprigs of thyme. Fresh oregano if ya have some, I had to use dried, a tablespoon or so. A few splashes of olive oil, also helps keep the foam down when the juice boils. That’s the basic sauce, just takes time to reduce. I started with 6 qts of juice and ended up with 3-1/2 pints of sauce. The half pint I reduced again in a small pot to a paste, adding a tablespoon of tomato paste.
    As for soggy crust, use thick sauce, use a stone, go very hot oven, eat it fast-lol.

  48. 48.

    Bnut

    Can I mention there is a thread on RedState devoted to comparing cherry picked manly pictures of Putin vs. Obama. FML.

  51. 51.

    The Dangerman

    @marcopolo:

    …insisted Thursday that he and Pujols are attending only after receiving assurances that the event is not a thinly disguised political rally.

    So, how stupid do you have to be to believe a teabagging event, hosted by Glenn Beck (buy a vowel or read his fucking books to get a clue), with a major attendee being Sarah Palin….

    ….is not a political rally. What in the fucking fuckety fuck?

    Shit, only explanation I can come up with is steroids stupor; I didn’t think Pujols juiced, but…

  54. 54.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Bnut: I assumed you mentioned it for the giggle factor. I simply wondered why such a thing would exist.

  55. 55.

    demo woman

    The DNC just called for money. I mentioned that they could call me back when they started fighting back against the repubs slurs. It’s hard being a democrat!!

  56. 56.

    The Commish (mattt)

    Hey playas – if it doesn’t mess you up can you see that either your team name or your Yahoo fantasy nickname matches the handles you use here at Ballon Juice? Maybe they’re lurkers (like me!) but right now I don’t recognize a number of the names signed up.

    On the league homepage look to the red linkbar and click League then Managers, then click on your current nick and update it to something recognizable from B-J. Yahoo takes 5-10 minutes to recognize updates here.

    Thanks!

  57. 57.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Bnut: Isn’t Tony LaRussa also involved in animal rights activism or something like that? I was under the impression he was kind of hippieish…

  58. 58.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @demo woman: I wonder if, supposing enough people do that, a message will get through. I am by no means a firebagger, but I would not mind at all, at all, if some people started tossing red meat to the liberal hordes.

  60. 60.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Bnut:
    @The Dangerman:

    I can sort of imagine a Latino sports celebrity deciding to take a platform he’d been given and use it for a contrary purpose. But I can also imagine Pujols deciding to make himself into the Latino Curt Schilling. (As someone who spent almost the entire 1990s in Philadelphia, I LOVED Curt Schilling–saw his 300th K two straight years, IIRC–and then he decided to politicize himself. Bah.)

  63. 63.

    The Dangerman

    @FlipYrWhig:

    I can sort of imagine a Latino sports celebrity deciding to take a platform he’d been given and use it for a contrary purpose. But I can also imagine Pujols deciding to make himself into the Latino Curt Schilling.

    I’d have no problem in either case (especially the former, of course)…

    …but don’t insult me by saying attendance is only because it isn’t political. That’s just an absurd crock of shit…

    …roughly comparable to Beck claiming he didn’t know this fell on the anniversary of the “I Have A Dream” speech. Yeah, right….

  66. 66.

    jimmything2681

    Mehlemon party on the FF league. Permanent lurker here. Kind of a reach on the team name, but I think I did ok with it (PLEASE VALIDATE ME)?

  68. 68.

    Roger Moore

    @jeffreyw:

    As for soggy crust, use thick sauce, use a stone, go very hot oven, eat it fast-lol.

    And go easy on the sauce and toppings. If you have the kind of thin pizza that’s at the biggest risk of getting soggy, you need to use just enough sauce to cover the crust and at most a single layer of toppings. I find that it’s also often helpful to pre-cook potentially juicy toppings, and to use a stone above as well as below the pizza so that the top cooks quickly.

  69. 69.

    FlipYrWhig

    @The Dangerman: Some people have a too-strict sense of what “political” means. Like if it’s not going to endorse candidates, it’s not “political.” I disagree with that, but I can imagine someone thinking it.

  70. 70.

    Lysana

    The Beck rally can’t be blatantly political (as in not endorsing candidates or a party) because it’s donating proceeds to a non-profit organization dedicated to giving college scholarships to children of special forces members who die in combat or training. Small, little-known group that is now Beck’s single good idea this year.

    Of course, it’s going to be biased as all hell at that rally, but we knew this.

  76. 76.

    Gordon, The Big Express Engine

    Too bad the league is already full. My team, the Shake Weights, was going win this thing.

    In other news, I have the #1 pick in my regular league. Any compelling arguments for not taking Chris Johnson?

    Best other team name in my league: DezB does Dallas

  77. 77.

    quaint irene

    Stupidest Movie Title Ever:

    This trumps all.

    “Mother, may I sleep with danger?”

    It stars Tori Spelling. ‘Nuff said.

  78. 78.

    FlipYrWhig

    @quaint irene: That one really is legendary. Someone once conjectured that it was a mash-up of two possible titles, “Mother May I?” and “Sleep With Danger.”

  79. 79.

    The Commish (mattt)

    @Gordon, The Big Express Engine: Chris Johnson had a really great year. Adrian Peterson’s acceleration through the hole is proof of miracles. Just my $0.02

    The first B-J league filled up so fast, there may be a second. Stay tuned.

  81. 81.

    WereBear

    @Roger Moore: Now that was a fun movie. On Mystery Science.

    Though for all I know, they’d be able to do a great job on the Tori Spelling movie, too.

    Personal favorite?

    Missing in Action 2: The Beginning

  82. 82.

    RSR

    league full, but if any league members are looking for a co-owner let me know.

    ryanroat ..at.. gmail.com

    done a couple years before; won league championship last year, woo!

  83. 83.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Roger Moore #80:

    You must not remember “Can Heironymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?”

    Yes, I saw it.

    Yes, I was totally wasted at the time.

  85. 85.

    freelancer

    @RSR: yeah BJ might need a few leagues. I’m, er, conversant in the NFL, just never did a fantasy team. I’m up for joining if someone were to create a 2nd league.

  88. 88.

    Alice Blue

    @ Quaint Irene no. 77: Here’s my nomination for Stupidest Movie Title Ever (drum roll, please):

    “She Woke Up Pregnant.”

    I swear I am not making this up.

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