Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Come on, man.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Nothing worth doing is easy.

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

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

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

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Friday Night Open Thread

Friday Night Open Thread

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I was in the back office playing warcrack and blurting out obscenities on twitter and I heard Shawn talking, thought he was talking to me, and came out and found this:

shamelesspets

Steve and Lily are total sluts when it comes to a lap.

Also, I’ve taken to calling Shawn my heterosexual life partner in public because it makes people do a double-take and look at you funny for a second before they figure out what you are saying.

Reader Interactions

102Comments

  2. 2.

    srv

    In all the Balloon-Juice Interons, you have found no womyn to marry off Shawn?

    You could do an auction. Or it could be Game of Thrones-ish. What’s Empress Marcotte up to?

    Or perhaps you should start an abbey.

  4. 4.

    Mandalay

    Hillary Clinton desperately pretending that she is having fun…
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/national/word-association-with-hillary-clinton/2014/12/05/998cc7dc-7ceb-11e4-8241-8cc0a3670239_video.html

    President Obama actually having fun…
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/politics/obama-busts-a-move-with-santa-claus/2014/12/05/ba8cca00-7c9a-11e4-8241-8cc0a3670239_video.html

    No matter who gets the job next, the country loses when he steps down.

  9. 9.

    Felonius Monk

    The wingnuts apparently have a new star asshole and her picture alone will make you want to toss your cookies. Oh yeah, she’s not a racist either.

  10. 10.

    CaseyL

    Steve looks bigger than Lily in that photo!

    @rikyrah:

    The thing is…. I understand this.

    I’ve lived with lovers, and I’ve lived with friends. Friends work out better. I’d love to find a “heterosexual life partner,” though after living on my own for so many years I’d probably make a lousy housemate.

  11. 11.

    Tommy

    @CaseyL:

    I’ve lived with lovers, and I’ve lived with friends. Friends work out better.

    For a number of years my brother lived with me. I miss that. Enjoyable.

  14. 14.

    Pogonip

    I am pleased to report that no one in my little circle has died for three entire days!

    It’s raining hard. Glad it’s not snow.

    I have one question about the Rolling Stone Kerfuffle. Even I know that fraternities are notorious for ungentlemanly behavior. So why do colleges allow them? Aren’t they lawsuits waiting to happen?

  16. 16.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Pogonip: Ask Cole about his boys. My experience of a fraternity was unreservedly positive, but I went to a small school that had strong controls over the Greek system.

  18. 18.

    Tommy

    @Pogonip: I was President of my frat. I got kicked out. This was the late 80s. I didn’t seem to understand hazing. And we hazed. I tried to change things and that didn’t work out so well. I engaged in it. Nothing close to perfect. But I learned I was wrong. Maybe I should be a better person.

  21. 21.

    Howard Beale IV

    For those of you who may be interested in this new high-resolution audio streaming service that’s been getting some glowing press called Tidal Hifi? I gave it a whirl.

    My advice? Skip it for now.

    I ran into several issues with the service saying it could not provide a lossless bitstream, but perhaps the most damning was the fact that their catalog, quite frankly, sucks dead donkey dick. It appears Tidal Hifi could not get unfettered access to the catalogs of the majors, with the result that artists works are just not there. Example: Fleetwood Mac. You would expect that when you pulled up their album list you’d see Tusk-but-surpruse!-not here.

    Same thing when I went to search for notorious boy band BBMak-nanda. zero. zilch. null set.

    And he deal breaker for me-no Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. So much for Tidal’s attorneys, never mind their nanocephalic slackjawed mouthbreathing ‘curators’.

    Seriously, Tidal-if you’re going to charge twice the price of Rhaposidy, Spotify et. al., you had best deliver more than twice the value with the same sized catalog-but since you couldn’t even get that right ,you either best become nichey (i.e., classical/jazz.blues), or wind-up your business.

  23. 23.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Tommy: Delta Nu didn’t haze. The worst one could do was ask a pledge do 10 push-ups. If the pledge thought it was unjustified, he could ask the active to do them with him. That was it.

  24. 24.

    MikeInSewickley

    Today was a tough and tiring day… until this post and picture.

    Thanks, JC and the Balloon Juice fraternity. I needed this.

    And let us know when the Calendar is available.

  25. 25.

    Tommy

    @Omnes Omnibus: You are a frat brother of mine. Not every place is the same. Mine was terrible. We beat people. It was just want we did. I know it makes no sense now, but it seemed to make sense at the time.

  26. 26.

    Helen

    @Omnes Omnibus: I want to be your friend. Well. Anyone’s friend. So. I will write what I think you want to hear. Gosh. Don’t understand. Why aren’t all smart far left leaning liberals. Like me.

  29. 29.

    BruinKid

    Looks like the libertarian crowd is flailing around trying to defend their savior Rand Paul after he blamed cigarette taxes for Eric Garner’s death. A sampling:

    Gonna wreck the NYC case real quick using the states own legislation.

    Mr. Garner was detained for resisting arrest. No crime had been committed. It is not possible to be arrested for resisting arrest. That’s called kidnapping, which is a felony. Now during the commission of a felony, a homicide has taken place.

    And for all of you stupid fuckin race baiters, the supervising officer, a black woman, stood idly by and let this happen. It isn’t a racial issue. It’s an authoritarian issue.

  30. 30.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Tommy: It made no sense to us in the early ’80s. Sure, making someone jumping through some hoops to join a group makes sense, but why the hell would you abuse people you like and want to be around? I am not saying that my house was innocent of any bad behavior, but we sure as hell didn’t haze and we had as diverse a population as a small liberal arts college in the Upper Midwest permitted.

  32. 32.

    NotMax

    We used to call people like that who shared an abode checkmates.

    (When a paycheck comes in, we both have the option to make some use of it.)

  33. 33.

    satby

    Open thread so: thanks to all the Juicers who have ordered for the holidays. It’s a huge help today especially, my boss called me to tell me my paycheck was going to bounce. He’ll be good for it, but it’s going to be a hassle; but knowing I had some back-up made me totally Zen about it.
    I blame you guys.
    And Obama.

  38. 38.

    LesGS

    My daughters share the same last name.

    However, that last name is the result of a couple of hippy-ish sort of guys putting their last names together, with no hyphen in the middle. (I don’t know if the lack of a hyphen is important or not.)

    Anyway, they moved in together once they left the nest, which is fantastic as far as I am concerned. Family needs to look out for one another.

    But then they went to the bank together to work some rental/utility/whatever issue out. The older daughter, while queer, needs to pass as not in her job, so she doesn’t blip anyone’s radar. The younger couldn’t pass as straight if she wanted to, which she most definitely does not.

    So they’re dealing with a very polite teller, who is trying to work out their tangled finances, when the younger (who is way smarter, people-wise, than the rest of us nerds) realizes the teller thinks she and her sister are married.

    She says, “We’re sisters, you know. That’s why we have the same last name.”

    The teller’s brain goes ‘ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk,” and then she says, “Oh!”

    Then the finances situation flows much smoother, and the teller has to discreetly whisper to a manager that the girls aren’t married, that they’re just sisters.

    So they’re homosexual partners… but not.

  39. 39.

    Helen

    @Omnes Omnibus: I did. The comment has nothing to do with the price of tea in China. My bad. I was being sarcastic. Responding to the comment above. Where the fuck is Corner Stone when I need him?

  40. 40.

    Cacti

    @efgoldman:

    How did Arizona beat Oregon earlier this year?

    Even in their best years, Oregon always seems to have one game where they shit the bed and lose one that they shouldn’t.

  41. 41.

    stinger

    Even with two heat packs on his lap, Shawn looks like he’s wearing several layers of clothing. Might be time to turn on the furnace….

  43. 43.

    Howard Beale IV

    @srv:

    How about a Kickstarter to build an app that makes your beats sound like tubes?

    Even Turd Polishing has its limits.

  46. 46.

    Suzanne

    Hahaha, when I was at UA in the late 90s-early 00s, the notorious frat was ZBT. Their frat house had a masonry fence around it, and they used to block the gates and fill the entire yard with enough water that they could swim in it and jump off the roof into the “pool”. One of the other ones used to haze their pledges with “the elephant walk”.

    I had and still have no desire to spend even a few moments around people like that, so I did not join a sorority or attend frat party bullshit.

  47. 47.

    Suzanne

    The beasties are adorable and it also looks like you may have gotten rid of those fugly end tables?! HUZZAH!

  52. 52.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    This person was hired to teach small children. I’d also bet a good chunk of this month’s mortgage payment she has a degree from a “Christian” college

    Angela Box, a third-grade teacher in west Houston, made the remarks on episodes of a local conservative political show “Tommy’s Garage,” the Houston Chronicle reported.
    “Every normal human being in the world knows that goat-fucking Muslims and, oh, boy fucking Muslims, are the evil of the world,” Box appears to have said in one of the broadcasts. She also referred to Muslims as “bacon-haters.”
    The teacher also joked she was hopeful President Obama would catch Ebola. “Can’t Ebola just take one for the team and take out Obama?” Box said, according to the paper.[…]
    “As I have said before, opposing President Obama and sounding the alarm about radical Islam does not make me a racist,” her statement read.
    Box has repeated that she is not a racist since X made the allegations in November, comparing herself to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
    “I don’t believe in judging people by the color of their skin. I, actually, like Martin Luther King did, shockingly, judge people by the content of their character,” Box said in an KHOU interview last month.

  55. 55.

    Suzanne

    @Omnes Omnibus: Um, no. Not even slightly. I merely recounted my experiences at a specific university at a specific point in time. Who pissed in your cornflakes tonight?

  58. 58.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    Well, I’m pretty sure that I’ve never seen a hockey team win by twelve goals before. By the end, the Gophers could have sent out almost a full shift worth of players with two goals, looking for the hat trick. Nina Rodgers has two goals in her career, both tonight. Paige Haley also scored her first, halfway through her sophomore season.

    I’m worn out from singing the Rouser so many times.

  60. 60.

    Drunken hausfrau

    I love this. Look, I think really, we all just need to find people and animals with whom we can live and love,

  65. 65.

    NotMax

    Reports are that ratings for Peter Pan were down 46% from last year’s live The Sound of Music.

    No surprise, that.

  67. 67.

    Mnemosyne

    @efgoldman:

    I’m pretty sure Yatsy means that he’s in the process of being born, like, right now.

    My niece and nephew were born via scheduled C-section, so the waiting was a little less exciting. Still great once they got here, though.

  69. 69.

    tsquared2001

    @Omnes Omnibus: I deliberately picked my college because it didn’t have frats.Or sororities.Or anybody who thought making somebody jump through hoops was fun. But then I am a city kid.

  72. 72.

    Suzanne

    @Omnes Omnibus: Hah, I can see that. I honestly think the fact that they filled up their yard with water and made it into a pool is hilarious. I mean, crazy and stupid, but funny. I must applaud them for their huevos, as well as their trust in the structural integrity of their fence.

    I know. Some frats are cool, some are mediocre, some are full of tools. I was on an academic scholarship and I lived in an honors dorm, and if I had tried to join a sorority, I would have gotten many funny looks, because the Greek houses there were almost all completely party-oriented. But I know it’s not the same everywhere.

  73. 73.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @efgoldman: St. Cloud State. Perpetually not very good but they did split with Ohio State and swept RPI this year. Weak, but still better than most of the teams #1 ranked BC has played this year.

  76. 76.

    Joel Hanes

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    why the hell would you abuse people you like and want to be around?

    Traumatic initiation is a group-cohesion technique known since antiquity —
    people identify with others with the same scars.

    Unit loyalty in the military is based partly on a peculiar shared experience of oppression.
    There’s nothing that builds community like shared suffering. No one else understands.

    IMHO medical residency has more than a whiff of this.

  77. 77.

    Suzanne

    @Joel Hanes: My question was always: why the hell would you want to hang out with people who want you to put your thumb up another dude’s ass [substitute hazing ritual here]? Like, why does that seem fun? And why would you pay for that privilege? You can make friends for free.

  78. 78.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Joel Hanes:

    Unit loyalty in the military is based partly on a peculiar shared experience of oppression.
    There’s nothing that builds community like shared suffering. No one else understands.

    My experience in the military also suggests that you are wrong. Going through a difficult situation does not equal oppression. YMMV.

    @Suzanne: That kind of behavior is not universal. Ask Cole about his Frat kids.

  79. 79.

    Suzanne

    I am in an excellent fucking mood. I got all my pieces glazed. Love my new airbrush! Kiln gets unloaded tomorrow, and the first half of my pieces are in it. I made a sushi-and-sake set for four for Mr. Suzanne. I’ve been working on it for months, and I’m eager to see how it comes out.

  80. 80.

    Nutella

    Another excellent use of my tax dollars:

    Retired Cardinal Francis George still resides at the Gold Coast mansion where the archbishop has historically lived and has Chicago police-provided security there. … Police officers who work at the mansion … are not paid by the archdiocese because the mansion is considered part of Chicago police’s regular detail … Chicago police spokesman Martin Maloney said officers are assigned to the archdiocese mansion and have been for many years.

    The diocese has millions of dollars under its control and the archbishop lives in an [expletive-deleted] mansion but we, the taxpayers of Chicago, are paying for police to watch the mansion.

    link

    (edited for clarity)

  81. 81.

    Yatsuno

    @John Cole +0:

    You sure he’s not just breathing hard?

    HE WILL BE!!!

    And I love that y’all reacted pretty much as I hoped you would. I love you jackals!

  82. 82.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Nutella: Nice house. Looks like Cupich, who is Francis’s man in Chicago, is going to stay in the rectory, and the Pope lives as I understand it in a small apartment in Vatican City.

    Also, too, I really doubt the Chicago Archdiocese pays property taxes.

  84. 84.

    Nutella

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Yep. Very nice.

    It’s on a huge lot with a big lawn in a neighborhood where nobody else has a lawn much bigger than a postage stamp since real estate is so expensive.

    Besides the big house, now occupied by four clergymen, there’s a converted carriage house where the nuns who work as domestic help in the big house live.

    link

  85. 85.

    Nutella

    @Nutella:

    From the same CNN article, the reason given for keeping the mansion:

    “The cardinal uses the building for meetings and receptions with donors,” Dolan said, “and we’d be hard-pressed to find any other place that could serve those purposes.”

    Maybe they could use this large and very well-located building for that. The school that used to be there was closed a few years ago and now it’s used for diocesan offices.

    Plenty of room for parties and no extra police assigned.

  86. 86.

    divF

    Was watching Rachel Maddow this evening. She opened with all of the good news for the Obama admin for the last six years, closing with the polling numbers for Obama’s immigration policy. They were:
    50% – just about right
    22% – didn’t go far enough
    And what does that leave, boys and girls ?

  89. 89.

    divF

    @Yatsuno:

    So in other news…MY NEPHEW IS COMING!!!

    Ours moved in with us in July. He’s 21, going to community college, and has stepmother issues that keep him from doing this at home. However, we used to take care of him (and his sister) when they were little staggerers. Major cuteness and much love – that’s why we immediately took him in when things started coming unglued for him.

  90. 90.

    eemom

    OT, and sorry to rain on y’all’s late night parade, but I am fucking pissed about this.

    You know what, Cole? You’re a good man in a lot of ways, but your knee jerk “Imma PROVE I’m a progressive” shit in those UVA threads is really pretty shameful.

    You never did answer the very good question someone put to you the other night: What would your reaction have been if YOUR precious frat boys were the ones who were accused?

  93. 93.

    ThresherK

    “Thought he was talking to me” indicates yet another person who doesn’t have a different voice addressing animals v. people.

    In our house those once-unique voices are converging. Neither I nor my wife are surprised anymore when one asks “What did you say?” and hear “No, I was talking to the cat”.

  94. 94.

    John Cole +0

    @eemom: I’d say it’s more a knee-jerk reactionary. And my reaction, if you remember, was to the demands of hearing both sides, so it was based on my pre-existing hatred of “both sides do it” form of journalism.

    And I’d be pissed. Pissed if they did it, pissed if they didn’t. But I’d call nationals, call the chapter council, call the involved alums, get a lawyer, and hit things head on either way.

    Remember, I was operating under the assumption that the author had contacted them, as she stated.

  95. 95.

    chopper

    @Pogonip:

    I am pleased to report that no one in my little circle has died for three entire days!

    at least you can laugh. you’re okay.

  101. 101.

    Matt Smith

    Also, I’ve taken to calling Shawn my heterosexual life partner in public because it makes people do a double-take and look at you funny for a second before they figure out what you are saying.

    I love shit like that. I have a shirt with a big 3D rooster. People always look at it funny for a second as they think: “Is that shirt a cock joke? Or is it just me who looks at it and immediately thinks cock?”

    It’s my favorite shirt.

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