Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

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

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

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Reader Interactions

106Comments

  3. 3.

    JGabriel

    So when do the paternity results come in?

    This what happens when you drink and park. Accidents cause people.

    .

  7. 7.

    joeyess

    Anyone here object to my band naming ourselves after something in the Balloon Juice Lexicon?

    We’re going for a polarized crowd.

    Someone recently said to me “you don’t want to mix politics and religion with music and entertainment. You’ll lose half your crowd.”

    I responded that half the crowd was precisely what I’m trying to avoid.

  11. 11.

    joeyess

    We’re an overtly political/atheist band looking to fuse those topics with great music and deliberately polarize in the belief that the crowd we retain will be devoted followers. The rest of them? Feh.

  13. 13.

    joeyess

    @amk: Something less pretentious. We were calling ourselves Poe’s Descent.

    Also, too, we need to find something that won’t come up on a google search as already a band name.

  14. 14.

    Little Boots

    we’re not done with sully are we?

    cause now I’m obsessed.

    and where is that crazy black woman, by the way?

  20. 20.

    Gex

    I was going to ask if it was Clarence Thomas’ wife, but then I remembered she’s white. She can definitely pull off the rest of the description: crazy lady calling people.

  21. 21.

    Little Boots

    Big round of applause for Iowa. making everyone see the silliness of the Repubs. bless you neighbor!

  22. 22.

    joeyess

    I plan on feeding this blog all kinds of original music, video, and live footage. I hope you’ll all receive it in the spirit intended.

    We’re all old pros. This is the last band I’ll ever be in. I’m going to make this one count.

    Frontpagers be warned. I’m going to fill your email with stuff in hopes you post it.

    Since I consider this my go-to blog, I would like to share the music with you all.

  26. 26.

    Dee Loralei

    I look forward to hearing it Joey. But I don’t remember Poe’s Decent being a Balloonjuiceism. Too lazy to look it up tonight, LOL. Sorry. Football wore me out.

  33. 33.

    YellowJournalism

    Quick scan of the lexicon bring me Poutrage, Puke Funnel, and Iatropic Excitement as good band names, although I’m quite partial to Doughy Pantload.

  37. 37.

    Dee Loralei

    @joeyess: I just saw that movie a few weeks ago! Oh, and I looked in the lexicon and didn’t find Poe’s Decent, then went back and re-read what you wrote, you were called that and now you’re looking at the lexicon for better ideas. (I told ya I was just wore out, LOL.)

  38. 38.

    YellowJournalism

    Katy: What about Naugahyde Windpipe?
    Cecilia: Too metal.
    Raji: Oedipus and the Mama’s Boys.
    Cecilia: Too college radio.
    Deeje: My Johnson Is 12 Inches Long.
    Cecilia: Interesting, but it doesn’t really sound like a band name.

    Sorry, I love the concept of band names, and that’s one of my fav scenes in that movie. I also adore the name they decide on: Everybody Gets Laid.

  39. 39.

    Little Boots

    somehow, a terrible song called Activist Judges that everyone must still listen to seems right. I will try to find it.

  40. 40.

    Dee Loralei

    @taylormattd: That was a wild game, taylor, sorry your team lost. And yea, normally 56 fucking points would be a blow-out! So that sucks for all Huskie fans.

  47. 47.

    Calouste

    “Caribou Barbie and the Banana Republicans”

    or if you have a male lead singer:

    “Commander Codpiece and the Banana Republicans”

  48. 48.

    JGabriel

    @Narcissus:

    Keynes was right. It blows me away that this is controversial.

    We’re talking about people who still think natural selection is the devil’s handiwork.

    .

  53. 53.

    Jason

    “If she phoned you, how did you know she was black? There you go, making assumptions about people just coz of how they sound. And why is her race relevant at all? Why mention it? You got something against crazy black people? You think craziness and black goes hand in hand?”

  57. 57.

    Calouste

    @joeyess:

    That was my first thought, but liked Wingnut Event Horizon better. Still, problem with that is that it sounds ok, but needs a lot of explanation. I assume you’d prefer a name that has the wingnuts protesting the moment you book a venue, free publicity is good publicity.

    ETA: What about “The Bush Crime Syndicate”?

  60. 60.

    Little Boots

    @sfinny:

    damn, I should know. I know they’re Romanian. but beyond that, I should totally know, since I’m a little obsessed with that song. but I will find out.

  69. 69.

    BonnyAnne

    @Yutsano: Oddly, I have to *work* at UW Med tomorrow. Be well, whatever the cause for your visit, and fear not: we are very fond of Cougs! We hire a lot of them away from Pullman. They seem to like it here. :D

  74. 74.

    JGabriel

    @sfinny:

    It’s a better name than Epistemic Closure.

    Well, yeah. Epistemic Closure sounds like a surgical measure to prevent Santorum.

    .

  87. 87.

    MikeJ

    @Yutsano: Not medical but I saw a coug on youtube who builds model farm machinery out of lego. Said he lived on a farm growing 600 acres of peppermint. You know that somebody somewhere grows it, but I never thought there were vast fields of peppermint so nearby.

  88. 88.

    Mnemosyne

    @joeyess:

    I’m partial to A Snarling Mass of Vitriolic Vicious Jackals myself. But that may be too heavy metal. Maybe just The Vitriolic Jackals?

  90. 90.

    BonnyAnne

    @Yutsano: I have always marveled at the connection. But yes, your nursing school is excellent (better than ours IMHO, because it’s not so full of itself).

    Perhaps smiling politely at angry men who call you “hun” and complain about parasite government workers while you clean up their poo is, if nothing else, a similar skill set to dealing with sick, miserable … never mind. I cherish all of my patients. Yes.

    (I once had to hold a man’s head while he vomited all over himself, and in the background on TV Sean Hannity talked about how Obama was secretly friends with the head of NAMBLA. That was a challenging shift.)

  93. 93.

    Redshift

    I think a lot of the lexicon entries, like Wingnut Event Horizon and Epistemic Closure, make better album names than band names.

    Discussions like this always remind me of a bit in Alan Moore’s DR & Quinch where they note that many bands have a limited amount of creativity (present company excepted, of course) and use it all up thinking of a name, so they present a long list of band names as a public service. Sadly, it’s not online, as far as I can tell.

  95. 95.

    BonnyAnne

    @Crusty Dem: haha I’ve never even been up there. Apparently there are other parts of the hospital? Cascade FTW!

    Someone braver than me should propose a Seattle Balloon Juice meet-up. Might help if we had a front pager to lend us some rainy, shitty-football-filled support.

  96. 96.

    Gex

    @JGabriel: And if you concede that they go back to arguing against plate tectonics. And if you concede that they start telling you how heliocentrism is a Jewish conspiracy.

    No way they are going to understand Keynes.

  98. 98.

    Yutsano

    @BonnyAnne:

    Someone braver than me should propose a Seattle Balloon Juice meet-up.

    This has been done. But it was too much of a blast to not have a repeat performance sometime soon. :) Plus we need to celebrate CaseyL’s new gig anyway.

  101. 101.

    BonnyAnne

    @Yutsano: OH MY GOD AND IT WAS EVEN AT THE ZIG ZAG. That is my favoritest bar of all favorite bars. I hate myself so much right now.

    Whatever CaseyL’s new gig is, I say yes and yes to a repeat. hopefully I will hear about this one.

  102. 102.

    BonnyAnne

    @Ian: I have seen some pretty bad shit, too but it turns out that not much tops choosing between someone vomiting up bile and Hannity saying “NAMBLA” over and over and over. I think I chose the bile.

  103. 103.

    Bago

    Wait, wait, wait, I missed an event at the zig zag? They had the BEST pizza before the remodel! I have been through New York, Vancouver, D.C. , San Francisco, Dallas, Amsterdam, Istanbul and several more cities too tedious to type out, but hot damn if they didn’t have the best pizza.

  106. 106.

    NobodySpecial

    If it’s not too late, let me suggest Green Balloons would also be an excellent band name. Or if you want to get really red-staters unwelcome, The Seventythird Percentile.

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