Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

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

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

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

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

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Apparently, Another Open Thread is Needed

Apparently, Another Open Thread is Needed

by | 69 Comments

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Just got done reading and checked the site and saw that y’all had been left alone for four whole hours, which kind of scared the hell out of me. “Oh, god. What kind of obscene comments will I get emails about? Who is going to email me whining about who should be banned? What kind of bizarre speculation took place? HOW CLOSE ARE THEY TO RIOTING?”

And that is how I felt after leaving you reprobates alone for only four hours.

And yes, I know the god damned mobile site is causing problems. Stop emailing me. Redesign should be done in a few days.

Reader Interactions

69Comments

  2. 2.

    Death Panel Truck

    Y’know, in the world I inhabit, “god damned” is one word.

    Jes’ sayin’.

  6. 6.

    freelancer

    Any update on those of us who open up the site on a mobile device, which, when we do, we get the Mobile site, and we select the option to go back to the regular site and get a Server error?

    Also, if you have any scratch left in your account, resident blogwhore jurassicpork posted below and apparently is still in dire need of some help. I’d pitch in even though I don’t like the guy’s style, but I’m broke as a Steinbeck character this week.

    Personally, I think he’s a self-promoting dickhead of a commenter, but if he’s really going through what he says he is, then better safe than sorry and he could use the shout out.

  8. 8.

    piratedan

    I just wish I wasn’t so incredibly angry at all of the idiocy that I see in our politics and in our culture these days. I ask these fundy asshats what the main tenets of their religion is, i.e. what did Jeebus preach while he walked land (and water) of our planet and instead of tolerance, love and forgiveness; I get some old testament diatribe and a bunch of ever willing bastards to not only cast the first stone, they’ve brought a wheelbarrow full and are looking to make a profit off of it.

    I see asshats like Santorum and Romney and hear the rank idiocy of what they say and I sit back in wonder how any of these ratfuck bastards could be within 20 polling points of Bush, much less Obama. We start to see the tide of progress finally invest some basic rights for our brethren that don’t swing the way of the “majority” and while we applaud that movement these vile hypocrites seek to make women chattel and incubators again. All in the name of a God, who never wanted a church built in his name much less the use of his name in order to oppress the poor, the weak and the downtrodden.

  9. 9.

    Schlemizel

    Yeah know, maybe if you got some drugs you could sleep at night (it might also help to turn off the damn twitter machine and just do a delete all on your email at random intervals). Then you wouldn’t be as bothered by the incessant whinging about the goddam site and your sister could learn that patience is a virtue.

    Now if I could just get some goddam sleep I wouldn’t be here whining about the whining.

  10. 10.

    Schlemizel

    @piratedan:
    As it was in the beginning it is now and ever shall be, world without end

    I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

  14. 14.

    Spaghetti Lee

    C’mon, John, you know you can trust me to behave myself. Well, except for the horse porn.

  16. 16.

    Schlemizel

    @PeakVT: The fuckup known as Viet Nam taught these dipshits a lesson about the use of power that lasted almost a generation. That ended with the jingoistic orgasm of dessert storm. The neocrud couldn’t wait to unleash some real large scale death and destruction though. In response to the monumental fuckups of Afghanistan and Iraq they have decided that the real solution is to triple down and fuck up Iran also.

    I’m sure if we just kill enough people they will all love us and want to live in peace and harmony.

  21. 21.

    El Cid

    __

    Finally, and even more disquieting, was the contention I heard repeatedly that an Israeli strike in the next six months – – conducted before Iran can further harden its nuclear sites, or make them redundant — will set back the ayatollahs’ atomic ambitions at least five years. American military planners tend to think that Israel could do only a year or two worth of damage.

    However, it’s preposterous when the libs say that the stimulus didn’t fail, that unemployment would have been much worse without it. How can you put so much faith in a mere counterfactual, libs?

  22. 22.

    gene108

    Going back to grad school, in my late 30’s has made me realize I would be a bad parent.

    I’ve truly come to understand homework and studying suck. It’s O.K. to try to B.S. your way through exams.

    If I had kids, who complained about not wanting to do homework, I’d be like “yeah kid, you don’t have to do homework. It sucks. Now join me in a bout of insomnia, as write comments on Balloon Juice at 3:48 am, when any good parent would make sure you were in bed.”

  24. 24.

    Anne Laurie

    Redesign should be done in a few days.

    Maybe everyone’s just waiting with bated breath for the Big Reveal?

    My sense is that an open thread is needed when the top-most post reaches 200 comments or so, that being when people reading on their mobile devices start complaining the thread won’t load for them. Some just north of 500 comments is where my Fios-driven FireFox-using desktop system stops loading. Now that Balloon Juice is getting a redesign, and its own server IIRC?, no doubt the metrics will reset and we’ll all have to recalibrate with it.

  25. 25.

    John O

    @gene108:

    I’m up from a lately-recurring dream in which I am trying to balance both a job and school, and doing neither worth a shit, and doing it alone, and it’s all unpleasant enough to me to jar me from sleep. I’m recently unemployed, and thinking of going back to school at 53. I assume there is a connection.

    So here I read.

  26. 26.

    Anne Laurie

    @Anne Laurie: Speaking of which, Cole, it’d be nice if the “Schedule” function were to be repaired during the reboot. One reason for the awkward pace of postings recently, I believe, is that your minions can no longer put together a post and have it held for a decent interval after the latest news. And those of us who are not on a “prime time” East Coast schedule lose our chance to front-page stuff like pet rescue blegs when the greatest number of readers will see them.

  27. 27.

    Elizabelle

    I’m glad DOJ is investigating the Trayvon Martin case.

    That high school student died because he went out for Skittles and an iced tea.

    Reminds me a little of the Louisiana man killing the Japanese teenaged exchange student years ago. Acquitted by a jury of his peers, but guilty in a civil trial. $650,000 for shooting a 130 pound teenager dressed as John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshihiro_Hattori

    Heartbroken for Trayvon’s family and friends. What a waste.

  29. 29.

    NotMax

    It has been like a year-and-a-half since Nate Silver hooked up with The NYT. Might be time by now to update the 538 link on this site to his no longer new digs.

  30. 30.

    MikeJ

    @NotMax: Frankly I’d scrap the entire blogroll and then let each of the frontpagers add one site. Two, maybe three rounds. With nine front pagers that’s a plenty long blogroll and you would know that everything added was a live blog and had the right address.

    I’d leave the mocking category though.

  32. 32.

    Joseph Nobles

    A modest request that “Enormous, mendacious, distended anus”, funny as it is, be stricken from the rotating header list. If anyone from work checked my surf history…

  33. 33.

    Schlemizel

    @MikeJ:
    I’d ask that great care be taken in trimming the blogroll. One of the things I appreciate most about BJ is that it has led me to a couple of other very worthy blogs. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a must read (unlike the other Atlantic bloggers who range from sometime worth the effort to OMG why does she even exist let alone have a blog!?).

    The mock roll though I do have an issue with. The front pagers have beaten that useless sack of shit Sully to death again and again, there is the rare whack at Politiwhore and someone mentioned dredstate the other day but that might have been a commenter. It seems like we never hear a peep out of them about the really horrific blots on the digital landscape. How did treason in defense of slavery’s grill survive the winter? Has the anchor baby gotten new pom-poms yet? Is Huge Fuckwit even still posting? Diseased minds want to know!

  34. 34.

    HeartlandLiberal

    Lately when reading the site with my laptop upstairs, which connects via my wireless router, the site will come up with what I assume is the mobile version. Usually a hard refresh will force it to reload the page with the non-mobile version.

    Since the laptop is running Win 7, I cannot imagine what about it would be triggering this, unless there is something in the way the proprietary Netgear WNA3100 Wireless-N 300 USB adapter driver is presenting itself.

    Anyway, just a data point, FWIW, for the work on the mobile site.

  37. 37.

    kindness

    @John O: You’re never too late. I went back 10 years ago. It was difficult getting into the mind set of memorization and writing papers and being intolerably poor but it worked.

    OK, I say it’s never too late but from here on out I’ll only go back for classes for fun, not for another degree.

  39. 39.

    flukebucket

    @Winston Smith:

    Good God. The comments at Free Republic and World Net Daily reach a level of suck so far unexplored.

    He could have been beaten in 2012. The Republican Party also knew this. This is why they eliminated early the two that could beat him[to wit] Sarah Patin and Herman Cain. These two could rally people and incite enthusasticasm.Palin could go nose to nose with obama, even while being savaged by the media, in any debate or political meeting and win. Given time, so could Cain.

    There is even somebody on there that does not believe that Obama’s mother is really dead but is instead living somewhere off the grid.

    Damn.

  40. 40.

    dance around in your bones

    I’m not sure I can handle the mental image of crowds of Repub/Baggers gripped in the throes of an enthusasticasm.

    The mind reels.

  43. 43.

    samara morgan

    @Suffern ACE: the stupid it burns.
    Iran is america redux. Khamenei and Nejad have the redstaters, rural, ostentatiously pious, undereducated, older………..iranian conservatives.
    Mousavi has the urban, socially liberal, educated, younger….the democratic progressives of Islam.
    This is a conflict between two different versions of Islam.
    Like America is conflict between two different versions of quasi-secular democracy.

  46. 46.

    samara morgan

    @El Cid:

    Finally, and even more disquieting, was the contention I heard repeatedly that an Israeli strike in the next six months – – conducted before Iran can further harden its nuclear sites, or make them redundant—will set back the ayatollahs’ atomic ambitions at least five years. American military planners tend to think that Israel could do only a year or two worth of damage.

    what brand of retard said that?
    Fordo, Our Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s target site of choice, is buried under a mountain topped with the second holiest city of Shi’ia Islam, Qom.
    Given that Israelis refuse to pre-notify their nominal “ally” America of a strike, that is open season on every NGO, missionary, american soldier and/or Xe/CIA contractor in the region.
    Besides which it will kick off WWIII.

  48. 48.

    samara morgan

    @THE: i think that is just preventative. Bibi is actively campaigning against O’s re-election by trying to jigger gas prices. The price of gas could impact O’s re-election.
    its better if Iran backs down from its threat to mine the straits of hormuz.

  49. 49.

    samara morgan

    @THE: tolejaso.
    Simulation forcasts WWIII

    A classified war simulation held this month to assess the repercussions of an Israeli attack on Iran forecasts that the strike would lead to a wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead, according to American officials.

    lol.
    do you think China, Russia, and India are going to sit on the sidelines?
    tick tick tick goes the doomsday clock.

  50. 50.

    THE

    @samara morgan: That is not how I’m reading it. I think it’s mainly backing up the huge economic pressure that is currently being put on Iran as a result of the increasingly ferocious economic sancitions.

    I believe it’s just trying to deter any Iranian tendency to lash out.

    The biggest impact on oil prices right now is the sanctions are making it harder to get Iranian oil onto the market.

  51. 51.

    THE

    which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead, according to American officials.

    Well that’s quite possible, but its a shitload short of WWIII. The last WW cost 60 million dead.

    EDIT: That’s why I find your language exaggerated, hysterical, and way over the top.

  52. 52.

    THE

    do you think China, Russia, and India are going to sit on the sidelines?

    Yes absolutely I think they will.

  53. 53.

    samara morgan

    @THE: /yawn how did any of the world wars start?
    small.
    the whole region is a tinderbox, and social media wont allow the US maintain the status quo.
    look at syria.
    if the US gets drawn in on Israels side the KSA royals are in big danger of getting their own arab spring.
    right now the US cant aid the syrian rebels because the syrian alawhites and christians will be slaughtered with arms we gave to the syrian muslim brotherhood.
    ouch!

  54. 54.

    THE

    right now the US cant aid the syrian rebels because the syrian alawhites and christians will be slaughtered with arms we gave to the syrian muslim brotherhood.

    I do agree with that part. But that’s not the direction I see US policy moving.

  55. 55.

    samara morgan

    @THE: again, the 800 pound gorilla in the room is Israel.
    if regional fighting breaks out both state and non-state actors will seize that as an opportunity to attack Israel and broaden the conflict.
    from mitch’s article, which im sure you read.

    The US might be able to sustain its role at the centre of the international decision-making process, but it will not be able to do so for long. New forces are emerging, while others have come a long way in establishing their presence. The Shanghai Cooperation Council, which includes Russia, China, India, Brazil and other nations of the Third World, is making rapid strides towards achieving parity not just with the US, but with the US and the EU put together. It is doing so not just economically, but militarily as well, and ultimately it will have a chance of settling the international contest in its favour.

  56. 56.

    samara morgan

    @THE: i agree with this.

    Therefore, Qatar will probably play a major part in sowing havoc among the petroleum-producing states in the Gulf after the collapse of Syria, while the US works to sap their economies and fuels conflict in the region in the hope of redrawing the regional map as a result of the chaos and destruction it has created. This does not mean that Qatar will be the only country to come out unscathed: no one can predict the outcome of a train of “creative chaos”. While the US is the producer and director, its Middle East allies are nothing more than extras, no matter how firmly they have convinced themselves that they are playing starring roles. They have not been made privy to the full script; they have no idea how it ends, and some will be taken by surprise when, in an upcoming episode, they find themselves written out of the script altogether and replaced by a new actor who will be puffed up by the new role. Qatar’s role and influence will then gradually subside as a result of the rise of other powers and the spread of Turkish-style Islamism.

    but i disagree with this.

    The US-generated chaos in the Middle East and Islamic world will not be of the sort that will enable Iran to create pro-Iranian pockets working against US strategic interests in the region either. The new balance that the US is working to forge with the support of Turkey, which has begun to shed its secular garb in favour of an Islamist one fashioned according to US tastes, will serve as a check on Iranian ambitions and on any designs Tehran might have to turn the chaos to its favour. At the same time, the Iranian leadership will also have to keep a sharp eye on its domestic population, where the US has been supporting secularist and nationalist forces in order to undermine the influence of the Islamists.

    the saddle point where the US has no leverage is Israel.
    the US was UNABLE to shape Turkish policy during the Palesetinian statehood crisis last fall, and American -Turkish relations have been damaged by Israeli actions during the blockade running incident.
    i dont think Turkey is quite the US patsy the author wants it to be.

  58. 58.

    THE

    You are raising way too many issues. I don’t have time to answer them all. I monitor the region closely because it impacts the oil market. I tried to answer some issues in the article already at your website. But of course Mitch has access to my research. So I don’t need to explain so much stuff to him.

    There are so many things I disagree with in that article that its hard to know where to start.

  59. 59.

    samara morgan

    @THE: what i see is the Shanghai Coop backed by Iran/Iraq oil reserves moving to achieve parity with the AmerIsrael-Euros, backed by KSA oil reserves….like teams choosing up sides for the apocalypse.
    but KSA is pure islamist– the constitution IS the Quran.
    one false step…….WWIII.
    ;)

  60. 60.

    samara morgan

    @Schlemizel: you act like this hasnt been SOP for America for the last half century.
    its regime change, nothing more, nothing less.
    only it fails every time.
    ;)

  61. 61.

    THE

    Just to take the segment you quote in #58.
    The SCO is not a military alliance. Also none of the powers in question have anything like the naval power to challenge the United States in the Persian Gulf. I find it hard to believe they could do so, in less than 10 or 20 years, even assuming China continues to grow at its current pace.

    e.g. China is only just starting up its first aircraft carrier.

  62. 62.

    samara morgan

    @THE: meh.
    economic might > military might…you taught me that, big guy.

    you saw what military might bought the US in Iraq and A-stan– jackshit.
    like i keep sayin’ ……TWO hostages to fortune. can’t irradiate either the oil fields or Our Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
    ;)

    you’re welcome

  63. 63.

    THE

    There are many problems with that article, for me, that short of Fisking it paragraph by paragraph…. I don’t know how to deal with it. Almost every paragraph I have problems with.

  64. 64.

    samara morgan

    @THE: just acknowledge ONE SINGLE THING.
    we are chained to the ME because of Israel.

    Now he tells us he has begun to suspect (but doesn’t yet quite believe) that it might all have been be a big Israeli bluff to pressure the Iranians via spooking the Americans. And it was a bluff that cynically used the memory of the Holocaust and was obviously intended to persuade the Obama administration (unsuccessfully as it turned out) to move their own red lines to the Likud’s, and go to war sooner rather than later. Well, isn’t that something: a government prepared to lie to its ally, risk escalation of what would be a global war, cynically exploit the Holocaust in a bluff, and do so via a journalist at the Atlantic.

    well isnt that special.
    waddisay, waddisay.
    ;)

  66. 66.

    THE

    just acknowledge ONE SINGLE THING.we are chained to the ME because of Israel.

    OK. Even as the oil fades away as a factor. USA will remain tied to the ME because of Israel.

    But the steady growth of Israel as a power, economically & demographically. vs. the decline of so many other nations in the region, make it an important future asset as well as a liability. I would project Israel will be a far more significant power by mid century than it is today. And it’s not insignificant today.

  67. 67.

    samara morgan

    @THE: not an asset. no.
    again, when the neighbors have hard times, what traditionally happens to the jewish folk?
    Israel is a pretty sorry ally to the US. A parasite that meddles toxically in our politics, starves children, spies on us and refuses to warn us of pre-emptive strikes.

  68. 68.

    samara morgan

    @THE: not to mention sukks up foreign aid, pogroms palestinians and imposes a Warsaw-style ghetto on arab families in Gaza, and adamantly refuses to discontinue policies (settlement land grab) that damage US interests.

    not an asset.

  69. 69.

    THE

    when the neighbors have hard times, what traditionally happens to the jewish folk?

    I think it you read the opinions of early zionists in the 19th century, it was to end that culture of eternal victimhood that the concept of the return was dreamed up.

    Jews started to believe that if you are going to be killed whatever you do, you might as well live in the one place that really matters to you, and where you can look after each other’s backs, and at least fight back.

    Knowing the history of Judaism, my sense is that they are not really any worse off in Israel than they would be anywhere else — Seeing Israel purely as their survival strategy. If I was Jewish I think I would be in Israel too.

    I think the “land grab” is a phase all colonialist powers have gone through, US and Australia, certainly, no less than anyone else. I am conscious that I am writing this, while sitting on “stolen land”.

    I guess I see them as an asset because they have been such a prolific scientific culture. Per capita, no-one has beaten them. Yet. Maybe China will one day, who knows?

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