Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not all heroes wear capes.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

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

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

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

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

Their freedom requires your slavery.

This blog will pay for itself.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

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

Let there be snark.

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

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

All your base are belong to Tunch.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

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

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Reader Interactions

185Comments

  3. 3.

    shelly

    Tunch!
    It’s funny, I always think of him as pure white, but in photos it’s surprising how much other coloring he has.

  5. 5.

    Fuzzy

    Balloon Juice is about as close as I have come to any social media. I guess it is a matter of stubborn pride in this crunchy old fart who’s kids cannot believe I read this site. Thanks folks

  6. 6.

    Elizabelle

    @Fuzzy:

    Great to have you here, but I was surprised that, as a group, we skew as old as we do.

    The meetup photos do not lie.

    I always took you guys for younger than me, and JCole is still in his early 40s, right?

  7. 7.

    Villago Delenda Est

    I (and some of my ancient, dinosaur hunting geek friends) never could get into Twitter. But Newt Gingrich embraced it.

    Which tells you something right there.

  9. 9.

    JPL

    Tunch looks slimmer but maybe he was bathed and furminatored before hand. John always said he wasn’t that big. Gosh, I miss him.

  12. 12.

    Hal

    There are days when I find social media the equivalent of website comments sections. Misinformation, false outrage, and in some cases, lots of racism, homophobia and other assorted bs. On Facebook I can enjoy one old classmate railing against having to push 2 for English (This is America!!!) or a handful of otherwise nice people who seem to be really hung up on drug testing people on welfare, because dammit, they work for a living.

    Still not a bad way to stay in contact with people you actually like.

  15. 15.

    MikeJ

    @OzarkHillbilly: I started to look yours up, but you had a name change. My first was:

    It is ironic that the theme of the GOP convention was announced today to be “Putting Country First”. K-Lo ends the post with, “There is a universal dynamic at work, whenever a fetishization of the collective is allowed to gather steam. “

  16. 16.

    schrodinger's catt

    Now that both Ezra Klein and Nate Silver have their online empires why don’t you? You can call it Tunch. Tagline: Bow before the paw. I can be your kitteh correspondent.

  20. 20.

    gogol's wife

    @Hal:

    I consider myself far left of center, but I have to admit I am annoyed by having to push 2 for English. Shouldn’t the default be English, and you have to push a number for any other language?

  24. 24.

    Suffern ACE

    I only have three tweets to choose from. I didn’t want to confront the truth that most of my deep thoughts require only 86 characters.

  29. 29.

    Violet

    I used the link in John’s post and checked the first tweet for CNN:

    CNN ✔ @CNN
    Follow

    Reality TV star Anna Nicole Smith dies at 39 http://tinyurl.com/3dm4p5
    6:43 PM – 8 Feb 2007

    Doesn’t that just sum up everything about CNN?

  30. 30.

    MikeJ

    @WaterGirl: Go to google and search for site:balloon-juice.com and in quotes their user name. After your first search it will give you the option of searching by date. I used a custom range starting from 1/1/2000 and the end date of today. set it to sort by date instead of relevance. If there are more than 10 pages of results, change the end date to one year earlier. Note that for some people (like yourself) you could guess at the approx time you started and skip over several iterations. For instance, I started searching for mine in 2009, then went to 2008.

  34. 34.

    geg6

    As I wave my fist impotently at the clouds, I have never tweeted and have never even followed anyone a single time on Twitter. Doesn’t interest me, with their 140 character limit and what little I’ve seen of it posted elsewhere is impossible to follow. I’m happy to have the blogosphere and Book of Faces report any tweeting that might be of interest and that’s easier for me to follow.

    I am officially old. And I don’t care.

  38. 38.

    RSA

    My first tweet, 18 Aug 2009:

    Liberal malcontent who moves to Europe: Traitor. Conservative malcontent who brings a gun to a Presidential speech: Patriot. Got it.

    With only 55 tweets, I just had to scroll a bit to the bottom of the page.

  40. 40.

    gogol's wife

    NewsMax: “Ellen De Generes Turns Show into Obama Mouthpiece.” I’ll have to start watching her.

  41. 41.

    Pogonip

    Both The Daily Puppy and Good Morning Kitten are exceptionally cute today. That is all.

  42. 42.

    WaterGirl

    @MikeJ: I entered this in the search field — site:balloon-juice.com “watergirl” but I didn’t see any option to search by date. What am I missing?

  43. 43.

    WaterGirl

    @geg6: I saw that you found a dress on-line, but I never saw what you chose. Would love to see it, if you have a link.

  46. 46.

    WaterGirl

    @Violet: I was quite unhappy about the whole thing, and now it’s just a memory that makes me laugh. There could be a lesson in that. Somewhere.

    @RSA: Excellent debut.

  48. 48.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    @MikeJ: Thanks for helping me waste 5 minutes of my life. 1/12/10 for me. This title of this post is apropos b/c that thread had several pictures of Putin shirtless at the top. Oi! That shit won’t die!

  49. 49.

    Shana

    @shelly: I was at the vet today picking up some medicine for our dog and looking through Cat Fancy while I was waiting and they had a profile of a cat breed called Turkish Van. I looked at the pictures of white cats with orange tails and orange spots on their heads and said “Oh my god, it’s Tunch!” I got a very odd look from the vet tech. Seriously, John, do a google search and tell me that breed doesn’t look exactly like Tunch.

  51. 51.

    Violet

    @Shana: I just googled it and OMG you’re right! There are a bunch of pictures of Turkish Van’s swimming. Was Tunch known for his swimming skills?

  52. 52.

    Elizabelle

    @Shana:

    Turkish Van? Yes, very much like Tunch.

    How did Tunch come to live in Chez Cole? Was he another “jump in the car” animal?

  55. 55.

    JPL

    @Shana: I found this on petfinders
    Some Vans have a color patch between the shoulder blades called the ‘Mark of Allah’. Just as the M on the tabby’s forehead is said to be a gift from the Virgin Mary, this ‘thumbprint of God’ is considered good luck in Moslem countries.

  56. 56.

    JPL

    @Violet: I know exactly where I was when I found out she died. Before hand, I wouldn’t have known who she was but I had just seen Pan’s Labyrinth and when I returned home this person was all over the news. (breaking news cnn) It seemed sorta shallow.

  59. 59.

    lamh36

    Rand Paul Lectures Us Again

    …His message of course being “You people are stupid to not vote for me even though I’m clearly trying to manipulate you and split the left, leaving Republicans in charge of everything so we can abolish nearly all of the social and civil rights advances made in the last 80 years.”

    And we’re not buying it, especially whenever President Obama does acknowledge race in America, he’s immediately portrayed by Republicans as divisive. Race doesn’t matter unless it’s a situation where Rand Paul thinks it should matter?

    Take your privilege and shove it, man…

  61. 61.

    Roger Moore

    @Baud:

    I’m more curious about what my last tweet on Twitter will be.

    “Ask for me tomorrow and you will find me a grave man.” Always steal from the best.

  62. 62.

    the Conster

    Started posting here in late 2008, and eventually only joined twitter to follow johngcole because he was epic after dark. I joined twitter after someone posted on the blog that he was tweeting about doing pedialite shots. Twitter was actually invented for Atrios and John Cole, but I’ve only tweeted twice. It’s too tempting to say something mean and I’m trying to work on that.

    ETA: All evidence notwithstanding.

  64. 64.

    Roger Moore

    @Shana:
    The similarity of Tunch to a Turkish Van has been much commented on in the past. It makes sense, since Tunch Ilkin (his namesake) is a Turkish-American. I don’t remember any comments about Tunch having an affinity for water, another well known trait of the Turkish Van, so he may just have a Van pattern.

  66. 66.

    muddy

    I can’t remember when I first visited here. I first found a link on the page on Salon where someone had links to a lot of blogs, left and right on the page. Peter Daou? Probably I didn’t comment for a loong time. I used to read it as a Republican site that I could stomach. I like to get the gist of what they are on about, but I have a limit.

    But sometimes John would say such things that I would remove the bookmark and the browsing data (so there!). But then there’d be something later where I wanted to hear what he said about it and I’d get lured back in. Until the next time I cursed him roundly. I guess I was getting so mad because I was sure he was better than that, and just needed to come to his senses. I haven’t deleted the bookmark in ages!

    Could use more Tunch pics though. Launch a retrospective. I liked the ones on that woven blankie.

  67. 67.

    raven

    @muddy: I think Jeffw told me about it after I got banned from FDL. I was in some goddamn motel in middle Georgia that didn’t get the b-ball tourney and I wandered in.

  68. 68.

    opiejeanne

    @schrodinger’s catt: I noticed him when he posted The Rant, late 2006 or early 2007. I don’t remember where I found the link but The Rant was profane and hilarious, and I understood the anger because I had already gone through a similar change politically.

  69. 69.

    Alison

    LOL apropos of the post title, Rachel led off her show with a trip down the “Bill Kristol is always wrong” memory lane.

  72. 72.

    J.Ty

    @Trentrunner: A Senior Editor, no less!

    Oh, god, I just recognized him. I’ve actually had Twitter fights with him before. It’s amazing that the WaPo managed to get a tech reporter named Timothy B. Lee in the first place, and even more amazing that he’s wrong about everything.

    ETA: OK, maybe the second part isn’t super amazing.

  73. 73.

    Elizabelle

    @JPL:

    How bizarre!

    I learned of Anna Nicole’s death while walking down a street with a friend on our way to a late afternoon showing of Pan’s Labyrinth, in downtown DC, and looked through a window at a TV and saw the Breaking News re ANS.

    We had the same day? Are you Skip?

  77. 77.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @WaterGirl: I’m not him but…

    Click on the “Search Tools” link, then click on the “Any Time” dropdown box, then click on “Custom Date Range”.

    I found this.

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  78. 78.

    raven

    @muddy: The death knell was when Jane hooked up with Grover. I relentlessly attacked until they did the deed. I loved the Norske Flamethower and the now deceased Southern Dragon and Christy was great but I couldn’t hack the bullshit anymore.

  79. 79.

    Steeplejack

    @WaterGirl:

    After your first search, at the top of the results you will see a “bar” with “Web | Images | Maps,” etc. At the far right is “Search Tools.” Click that and then select “Any time | Custom range.”

    The point is that the “Search Tools” gizmo doesn’t appear until after you run your first search.

  82. 82.

    raven

    @Baud: It hadn’t dawned on me but I stopped even checking in there so long ago that CTuttle is the only one I even recognize.

  83. 83.

    muddy

    @raven: Christy was the one I liked. I left way before the Grover thing. Can’t remember if I ever commented. Possibly in its original iteration?

    Just found this early comment from me in this thread at BJ, no wonder I used to get so mad at John!

  85. 85.

    Baud

    @raven:

    As I’ve mentioned before, I used to hang out at GOS. Some wonderful commenter there mentioned how BJ was a much better place than GOS had become, which is how I found this site. Rarely go back there now.

  87. 87.

    raven

    @Baud: I think what really makes a difference is that Cole does very little police work here. FDL started banning shit they didn’t like. From what I see here you have to really be out of line to get time outed.

  88. 88.

    David Koch

    @Trentrunner:

    Ezra’s new Vox employee thinks slutty sluts should pay for their own sluttish slutting pills:

    Dude-Bros are something else.

    TBogg had the nerve to criticize the Dude-Bros today for not caring about women’s rights, and Griftwald unleashed his flying monkeys to deface his blog.

  89. 89.

    Baud

    @efgoldman:

    I really like Benan, but I rely a lot on RSS for keeping up with blogs. On Maddow Blog, he no longer has full text articles on RSS, so I don’t read him as often as I would like.

  93. 93.

    Baud

    @raven:

    In general, I tend to think that little police work invites a blog community to drift and degenerate. Not sure why that’s not the case here.

  94. 94.

    raven

    @Baud: It’s the marketplace of ideas.

    eta

    I also think there is a pretty strong sense of community here. There hasn’t been a pet bleg in a while but, when there is, folks step up. Idiots like what’s it’s face keep trying to ruin the place but we manage to hang together. And then there is McClaren.

  96. 96.

    geg6

    @schrodinger’s catt:

    Oh my, no. That’s a decision I savor, unlike the dress. I love, love, love shoo shopping. I’ll probably buy four or five pairs and decide on which to wear at the last minute.

  103. 103.

    geg6

    @WaterGirl:

    The Ann Taylor you pointed me to, I think. I liked another more, but John made the final decision. I liked both. One was a bit more out there (a print that mimicked a Monet or Renoir) but both were fine. John’s more conservative than I am. It’s only $120 on sale.

  104. 104.

    NotMax

    Admit to never quite understanding what use or purpose Twitter serves, other than providing a platform for

    1) achieving an astoundingly high gibberish to comprehensible English ratio within a small space

    and

    2) more quickly bypassing the “put brain in gear” part of the old adage.

    Would compare tweets to fortune cookies, except an awful lot of people for reasons which escape me seem to undeservedly assign the former the kind of seriousness or depth which common sense denies the latter.

    (If you young’uns gonna insist on being on my lawn, could you at least pick a few weeds?)

  113. 113.

    Omnes Omnibus

    As long as we are on the types of things get posted on twitter, I hit a giant-assed pot hole the other day and now have a bulging sidewall on my front right tire. I needed new tires anyways, so I am getting them tomorrow.

  118. 118.

    ? Martin

    Damn. I’m coming up on my 10 year anniversary here. My first post was to call Cole and most of the people here idiots for checking the kerning on an obviously faked photo.

  120. 120.

    ? Martin

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    There are potholes the size of my car, on the roads here.

    Well, that’s damn convenient. Once your car falls into one, the road will be smooth for everyone else.

  123. 123.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @schrodinger’s cat: This one was deep and in the middle of a larger shallow looking puddle, so I didn’t see it. I am glad I didn’t damage the wheel. This just manages to be the kick in the pants I needed to get the car in for the tires anyway.

  125. 125.

    ? Martin

    @NotMax: Twitters not a half bad private messaging platform. Mostly I use it for news and notices. It’s very immediate and easy to set alarms to. I hardly post public things.

  126. 126.

    ? Martin

    @Baud: Well, Cole was still a wingnut, and his knee-jerk reaction was to go along with whatever bonkers grandpa email showed up in his inbox, so yeah, I’d wager he’d at least have been birther-curious. He didn’t always though, you could tell his brain would sometimes accidentally slip into gear. I didn’t really post much until he entered his teenage independent stage, though.

  127. 127.

    ? Martin

    @schrodinger’s cat: Well, yeah, I’ll be sad about that. But in this world of rugged individualism, I cannot help but fault you for buying a car the exact shape of the potholes. That strikes me as a foolish thing to do.

  130. 130.

    muddy

    @raven: I haven’t ever twittered or made an account, have seen a few at their google addy briefly. I always think how great it is when you get something like Jenny McCarthy asking people to gave her a hard time, and then they do for a week. Or how it will be very useful for the voting season. Seems like a great tool for social justice.

    But I just can’t stand to do it myself. I guess I am old.

  132. 132.

    Baud

    @muddy:

    I don’t do any original tweets. I sometimes respond to someone else’s tweet. Mostly I use it to see what’s going on in the news, etc.

  135. 135.

    raven

    (CNN) — Hours after Turkey’s prime minister vowed to “eradicate” Twitter, Turkish Internet users began to experience widespread disruptions Thursday while trying to access the popular social networking website.
    Outrage and fury erupted online. Within an hour the hashtags “#TwitterisblockedinTurkey,” “#DictatorErdogan” and “TurkeyBlockedTwitter” surged to the service’s top worldwide trends.

  140. 140.

    Southern Beale

    This also happened:

    Former Newsweek reporter Jonathan Alter publicly admitted he was completely wrong about the Iraq War:

    Newsweek asked Alter, who spent nearly 30 years working for this magazine before moving to Bloomberg, if there’s anything he’d change about the column with 11 years of hindsight. He was unequivocal. “I strongly regret writing that the war was ‘inevitable and necessary,’ ” he said. “I was totally wrong about that, as were scores of other liberal pundits, not to mention conservative ones, and almost every major politician except Barack Obama, who was a state senator at the time. It was a product of essentially believing Colin Powell that there were weapons of mass destruction.” As for that master narrative? Now it’s apparent, he says: “It was a complete fiasco.”

    “It was one of the greatest disasters in American history,” he added.

    Let’s hope this is a trend.

  143. 143.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Southern Beale:

    It was a product of essentially believing Colin Powell that there were weapons of mass destruction.”

    Why? Powell was not believable – except to those who were looking for an excuse to believe.

  145. 145.

    raven

    Cincy was a bit higher rated than OK so technically it is a bigger upset but the boys at the calcutta last night spent decent money on both.

  147. 147.

    raven

    @Baud: Harvard went for 70, NDSU for 80. I got American for 45 and stand to win 5% of a big pool for the biggest blowout.

  152. 152.

    danielx

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    It surely does. I guess my initial reactions to people who send out lots of tweets was something like this: 1) don’t you have anything else to do? And 2) what makes you think people give that much of a shit about you and your opinions that you need to inform them of same several times a day?

    Then I realized what a perfect mode of communication Twitter is for the Village, and everything fell into place with such loud clicks it’s a wonder it didn’t wake the cats.

  157. 157.

    PsiFighter37

    @Southern Beale: I’m sure that’s a comfort to the 4,000+ soldiers who are no longer with us. I was a goddamn junior in high school and knew that Colin Powell was a lying sack of shit when he was bullshitting his way through testimony at the UN.

    And the MSM let him off the hook. Being associated with something like that should have sunk his career, and yet he managed to blame it on other people who gave him bad intelligence. Fuck that; if he had any spine, he would’ve refused to give testimony on what was really fucking thin shit. I mean, come on!! Yellowcake from fucking Nigeria?

    Just another reason to question the judgment of our impending presidential nominee in a couple years, but that’s another discussion for another time.

  158. 158.

    Gin & Tonic

    @danielx: I have found Twitter very good for breaking news from areas where there may not be a lot of other coverage, or where Internet is spotty. For instance, I’ve been following about two dozen foreign correspondents in Ukraine for the last couple of months, and it is very useful for very short-form reportage. They’ll generally follow up with long-form pieces, but a day or two later.

  159. 159.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Gin & Tonic: Yeah, it can be very good for breaking news. First reports. lived tweets by a good reporter about an unfolding event can be priceless. Random comments from Charles Lane, not so much.

  164. 164.

    Violet

    @Southern Beale: Thanks for linking that. Good for him for apologizing so forthrightly and not going with the “mistakes were made” crap. But WTF blaming it on Colin Powell? That’s an excuse. They wanted war because it meant good stories. They knew if they opposed it their careers would tank. They didn’t want to be left out of the embeds or sent to the back of the briefing room (watch “Control Room” for more on that). It was a combination of blood lust, “fall in line” mentality and career opportunism. Colin Powell is nothing more than an excuse for their weakness.

  165. 165.

    PsiFighter37

    @J.Ty: I don’t blame Obama for picking himself for surrounding himself with Clintonites – as you suggest, there really was a very thin bench of Democratic officials to choose from, given our poor form at the ballot box – but there were certain people who should have never been allowed near the White House again (first name that comes to mind is easily Larry Summers). As one of the architects of the Clinton-era financial deregulation in the late 1990s, he was clearly the wrong guy to have the president’s ear on economic matters. Given the mandate he had, he really should’ve included one of the academics who was on the ball (e.g. a Krugman or Stieglitz, although whether they would have been interested – who knows) to work with Roemer and Geithner in righting the ship. That said, in hindsight, it’s probably a good thing that we did not nationalize the big banks, as (IIRC) Krugman was advising.

    The main problem is that (assuming Hillary Clinton wins in 2016), you’re going to have an entire generation of presidential advisers who cut their teeth working in Democratic administrations starting with Bill Clinton. I can’t see Hillary going out on a limb and naming a more progressive cabinet than Obama has, especially in the national security spots (and Obama has been no real progressive himself in that arena). We’ll see, but I’m not terribly optimistic.

  166. 166.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @J.Ty:

    So while I understand the Hillary reluctance, I don’t really see where else to turn.

    Those who, like Obama. weren’t prominent in 2003. Maybe that whole generation’s time has passed. There are a bunch of Democrats in their 40s and early 50s who deserve a look.

  167. 167.

    BruceFromOhio

    @Baud:

    I learned to trust my judgment because I didn’t buy into the Iraq War.

    I’ve learned to control the deep-seated, fundamental rage that breaks anew when I think back to the first moment I heard the name “Iraq” in a news story after 9/11, and how I could. not. fucking. believe. what was happening.

    I almost drowned once. This was far, far worse.

  168. 168.

    ranchandsyrup

    resisted the twitters until i stayed up all night following the chase of the Boston marathon bombers. lots of bad info and speculation to sift through but it was an hour or more ahead of news sites. i follow a lot of comedians and “weird twitter” people for the lulz.

    as said above, it’s a great semi private messaging system.

  170. 170.

    ? Martin

    @ranchandsyrup: Direct messages are a good actual private messaging system. Not enough people use them. Instead of “@johngcole” do “d johngcole” and only he would be able to see it. A reply to that give you another direct message.

  172. 172.

    J.Ty

    @Omnes Omnibus: Schweitzer and Hickenlooper come to mind immediately, but the former has skeletons in the ‘ol closet and the latter doesn’t seem interested. Ditto for Cuomo. Warren’s not really the type to run I don’t think…

    Meanwhile in the other category, Brown is too old, Biden is too old…

    I know we’re two years out but I’m not seeing any Dems making noises.

  174. 174.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @J.Ty: Gillibrand. O’Malley. The Castro brothers have promise, but are they ready for 2016 or is 2020/24 better? Was Obama seen as a real contender in 2006? No, he was not. There are people; one simply has to look.

  175. 175.

    J.Ty

    @Omnes Omnibus: Forgot about the Castros–the elder might have a shot. Haven’t been following O’Malley either, but good point. I… just don’t like legislators, I guess, re: Gillibrand. Can’t see much wrong with her though.

    I was wrapping up college in 2006, but Obama was definitely seen as a real contender on campus then. (I know, that’s not an ideal sample, but ’twas the grassroots what made him happen, kinda.)

  177. 177.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @J.Ty: Well, I was coming up on my 20th college reunion that year. Hillary might be the best candidate, but, it is 2014, don’t buy into any inevitability arguments. I would discourage support for a candidate who is over 60 – as a general rule. The job ages people. Badly.

  181. 181.

    J.Ty

    @Omnes Omnibus: Agreed on both counts. Hell, look at Carter after four years. Or Obama after six. And yeah, it’s definitely 16 months before the primaries start to rear their ugly heads, at least for the Dems. We shall see.

    Hillary > GOP, as others have pointed out. Other Dems > Hillary, sure. I don’t think I’ve ever argued for anything other than “most progressive candidate capable of winning.”

  183. 183.

    J.Ty

    @Omnes Omnibus: He’s 75, he’s done and even he knows it. He’s basically Governor Honey Badger at this point.

    One of my favorite moments in electoral ad history was when Whitman ran an ad in 2010 saying “When I first came to California, anything was possible. Why…” and so forth. And then Jerry Brown’s campaign took that clip and then said, more or less, “Hmm, who was governor then? Oh, right, Jerry Brown.”

  185. 185.

    BruceFromOhio

    @ranchandsyrup: Sorry, dead thread, but these are too good to pass up.

    @fireland:
    The Hooters gal gave me a cute little wink as she handed me my chicken fingers and a gun loaded with a single bullet.

    The bad news is daddy drank your sea monkeys. The good news is the resulting psychosexual mind-voyage inspired me to start a prog band.

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