Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

This fight is for everything.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

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

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

So many bastards, so little time.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

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

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

… gradually, and then suddenly.

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Reader Interactions

167Comments

  1. 1.

    Mike J

    probably doing another dreaded site re-design next month.

    Why? It mostly sort of works. The only complaints you ever see are about the mobile site, and that’s a plugin.

    ETA: I’m not saying don’t do it, I’m saying avoid the headache unless there’s a specific itch to scratch. Perhaps you could indulge in some Sullivan style social activism and just change the background color.

  2. 2.

    The Moar You Know

    Yeah. Everything for sale is shit. It’s actually “clean out the Amazon Warehouses Day” as far as I can tell.

    This Prime member is pretty disappointed.

  5. 5.

    JPL

    Anova Culinary cooker is marked down from 179 to 139. My son loves his. I was thinking of buying another for the other son. link

    the sale is pretty lame though

  6. 6.

    Belafon

    Something in the air I guess. LGF just did its update, DK is working on thiers, and now here.

  7. 7.

    Tommy

    Nope. Personally I am done with Amazon. I order a ton of shit online and almost never think about shipping costs. Heck I ordered a $275 lawn mower the other day, shipping was free. I know at times I pay for it built into the cost of the product, but again not something I think about.

    Ordered a few things through Amazon, which I don’t normally use them, the past months for like Mother’s/Father’s Day. The shipping was off the chart. In fact at the time made me think they were doing it just to push me to Prime.

    Mom’s gift was $55 of candy. They charged me $12 in shipping, and it wasn’t rush. They could have shipped it to me via dogs. I ordered way ahead of the date I needed the product.

    So nope, they will get no further money from me.

  8. 8.

    Tommy

    @JPL: As something of a foodie I followed your link. You would be a very cool parent to buy the other son one of those. Just saying ……

  9. 9.

    Cervantes

    Amazon sometimes offers junk at discounted prices?

    Not sure if that’s more or less surprising than the following:

    Sunday, Feb 23, 2014

    Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon’s sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers

    You might find your Prime membership morally indefensible after reading these stories about worker mistreatment

    Or not.

    In any event, it’s probably best to separate one’s economic choices from one’s political aspirations.

  10. 10.

    Roger Moore

    @JPL:

    Anova Culinary cooker is marked down from 179 to 139.

    That’s a deal. I wonder if it’s a sign of longer term price drops. Immersion circulators used to be over $1000, then a few hundred, now $139. If they can get them under $100, I expect them to start displacing slow cookers. Almost anything you do with a slow cooker can also be done sous vide, but definitely not vice versa.

  11. 11.

    Tommy

    @Belafon: Here more than I care to admit. But about the first time around as a frequent commentator there will be major changes. I do sites like this, WordPress, for a living. I am very good at my job. I know the app this site is based on like the back of my hand. I often dream about WordPress I use it so much.

    Can’t wait to see what happens or doesn’t happen …….

  12. 12.

    JPL

    @Roger Moore: The same company has a more expensive one. This is pretty much for home use. My son uses his for both meats and vegetables. All he has to do is sear the steaks when they are ready. They are cooked to perfection.
    I purchased his last Christmas.

  13. 13.

    Seanly

    Yeah, not too impressed with the sale. I’d like to get a 1 TB external drive to store games on my Xbox One (yes, I am too old to be playing video games). None of those are on sale…

    To make it worth the $99 price you need to order a bunch and then also use the video, book lending and music programs.

    Also, does the site’s link work with the Amazon Smile program? I donate to Engineers without Borders.

  14. 14.

    Roger Moore

    @JPL:

    The same company has a more expensive one.

    I know; I have one. As far as I can tell, the biggest advantage of the more expensive one is that it’s 1000W instead of 800W. Other than that, the cheaper one seems to be better. OTOH, they don’t seem to have the more expensive model on their web site anymore, so maybe it’s been discontinued.

  15. 15.

    boatboy_srq

    @Tommy: @Cervantes: I hear both of you. Housemate looks at me funny every time I talk about a HD audio player – but between Apple giving the big phat phinger to audiophiles again and again (DRM, premiums for 256-bit AACs, killing the iPod Classic, etc), Pandora pulling nasty behavior to push listeners to paid subscriptions (“no new music” for over two weeks now), and Amazon doing this stuff, my listening $s are going more and more either direct to artists or to HDTracks.

  16. 16.

    Tommy

    @Seanly: Check out Tiger Direct for that HD. My Brother who is a Cisco Networking guy hooked me up with Tiger Direct years ago and it is rare I buy any hardware not from them.

    As to your age, from one video gamer to another, the average age is 43. 46% female. The stereotype of only 18-year old men playing in their mother’s basement isn’t accurate. I am not 18 and I don’t live in my parents basement :)!

  17. 17.

    Mike J

    William Gibson ‏@GreatDismal 2h2 hours ago
    Jade Helm mega-warriors are installing a network of hyper-liberal Austinite blockwatchers across all Texas, right now

    William Gibson ‏@GreatDismal 2h2 hours ago
    By tomorrow, every patriot firearm in Texas will have been smelted in FEMA’s mobile electric gun-furnaces

    William Gibson ‏@GreatDismal 19m19 minutes ago
    First reports out of Texas of mass forced gay marriage

  18. 18.

    catclub

    @Tommy:

    Cooking Notifications – Receive push notifications on your smartphone when the device is preheating, brought up to temperature and when time is finished

    Whatever.

  20. 20.

    Tommy

    @boatboy_srq: Don’t get me started on Pandora. I am a paid user and they send me monthly usage stats. Most months I listen to more than 1,000 songs. I listen to Pandora when I clean around the house. Cook. But mostly when I walk, which if my fitness bracelet is accurate is about 20,000 steps a day. They are getting to be the same songs again and again. I have been lazy because it is just a service that is integrated into my life, but should be checking out Apple and Spotify.

  21. 21.

    boatboy_srq

    @Seanly: @Tommy: Micro Center and Fry’s are two more: both decent places with decent pricing. Tiger has come a long way, but there’s still a little shade there: they have a long, not-so-good reputation for poor service and shoddy product. Buying CompUSA probably helped them.

  23. 23.

    Tommy

    @catclub: Yeah that is just stupid. I can cook the shit out of stuff. I am also a total geek. I own nice kitchen stuff. With all that said I don’t own a single thing in the kitchen that will email me.

  24. 24.

    boatboy_srq

    @Tommy: Pandora has not played ONE TRACK for me in over two weeks (ever since the 6.2 update). This with over ten channels configured, each of which I KNOW has at least 100 tracks in the library. For all the folks who think it’s so cool to have someone else store their recordings so they never have to “buy” music again, this is what can happen when you don’t own the recording and can’t override “nothing to play here, please select something else”. FWIW, Onkyo published a HD audio player ‘droid app which works pretty darned well, and SD media is getting dirt-chea, so I’m not completely without options, but the post-Apple day is coming and my Pandora account is about 2 failed play attempts from deletion.

  25. 25.

    Pee Cee

    Amazon’s stuff today is worse than the crap they put up the week AFTER Black Friday. Pure garbage.

  26. 26.

    Tommy

    @boatboy_srq: Not Pandora related, but I moved my 34.7 days of music from iTunes to Google a few weeks ago. Took a lot of time but pretty easy process.

    I HATE the interface. Still learning to get around. Did I say I hate the interface? But my phone and tablet are both Andriod. My laptop a Chromebook. Things are starting to work better for me on a music front because everything is working together.

    I find I used to just listen to music. Now I tend to just want to stream shit and not think about it. My music in the cloud has made that a lot easier.

  27. 27.

    JustRuss

    Yeah, I used my sister-in-law’s prime account to check out the “hot deals” and…meh. But I did pick up a kayak and Coate’s new book, unfortunately Cole hadn’t posted his reminder about the link yet so….sorry. I rarely shop there so didn’t think about going through BJ.

  28. 28.

    jl

    I suggest a random Cole insult generator for the redesign. It would lead to an Amazon link, and put us in a mood to punch it and go buy something.

  29. 29.

    Ruviana

    There’s going to be a site redesign? Oh, bring back the little man, will you bring back the little balloon man? (Somebody had to do it.)

  30. 30.

    Arclite

    The Amazon Prime sale is fucking stupid. Anything I have a remote interest in is already sold out. There was one thing I saw that I wanted going on sale in 10 minutes. I waited until the second it went on sale, went to add it to my cart, and it was already sold out. In literally two seconds. Stupid.

    Add to that the vast majority of shit is stuff nobody wants.

  31. 31.

    Tommy

    @boatboy_srq: Oh second point. Onkyo. I paid Onkyo a ton of money for an amp in the mid-90s. I don’t use it anymore because, well because. But one of the better pieces of hardware I’ve bought. I tend to be a brand loyal guy, to a fault, and if they have something to offer I will look to it.

  32. 32.

    John Cole

    Twenty four comments in, half bitching that the stuff they want isn’t there so everything is shit, several jade helm posts, a couple on the egregious work practices at Amazon.

    Or, business as usual at the old folks home known as Balloon Juice.

    They better have fucking tapioca tonight.

  33. 33.

    boatboy_srq

    @Tommy: I haven’t used the Google cloud tools, but if they’re as bad as Amazon Cloud then you have my deepest sympathy. For playback on tablet and phone I can’t recommend the Onkyo app highly enough: small footprint, magnificent equalizer, support for just about every format and plays well with the OS. For extended listening, playlists are definitely a godsend. I’m playing with converting library management to WinAmp (yes, it’s still out there) when the ‘Pod finally croaks: Library is about 250 GB (including podcasts) and growing rapidly (mostly because I’m avoiding anything lower than 256-bit AAC and preferring WAV or FLAC formats) so management tools are a must. For the next player, iBasso, A&K and HiFiMAN are all on the watch lists. I’m still not sold on cloud storage (for the same reason I’m becoming unsold on streaming audio), but watching that as well.

  35. 35.

    boatboy_srq

    @Tommy: Oooooohhhhh. I’m shopping right now: got my eye on some older Rotel components (nearly-new separates for <10% the original MSRP? That's "steal" territory). But Onkyo does (or at least used to) make some killer stuff. Anytime you're thinking of upgrading, please let me know… :-)~

  36. 36.

    Cervantes

    @John Cole:

    Well said. For your next trick shed a few crocodile tears for workers and tell us again how hostile those nasty Republicans are to workers’ rights. I’m sure that’ll help.

  39. 39.

    Tommy

    This post me thinking about music. I went to iTunes and sorted songs by the most listened that wasn’t the Dead I got this:

    Tracy Chapman, Fast car.

    Made me happy …………

  40. 40.

    srv

    @jl: Since coders/webmonkeys like codenames, and Jade Helm 15 is the hot thing, what would we name this website redesign?

  42. 42.

    Germy Shoemangler

    Wait… balloon-juice is getting a redesign?

    Please don’t follow the esquire/charles pierce template. They ruined that one big time.

  44. 44.

    jl

    @srv: I don’t know. I do think the blog should be named anew for the Random Cole Insult of the Day, whatever it happens to be. Besides the many other very obvious advantages, it would sow great confusion far and wide, which is certainly a core BJ blog value.

  45. 45.

    Roger Moore

    @Tommy:
    Cooking notifications make more sense for something like sous vide, where a major point of the technique is to be very hands-off and often to cook for a very long time. The pre-heating on mine can take an hour or longer- bringing 20 quarts of water to 85°C takes time- so a notification when it’s ready would be handy.

  46. 46.

    boatboy_srq

    @John Cole: “Discussion involving shopping” translates to “open thread”. Not (overtly) political, not social, not kittehs/puppehs, not gardening, not snap-o-the-day; hence “open.”

    ,-)

  47. 47.

    Mike J

    @Germy Shoemangler:

    Please don’t follow the esquire/charles pierce template. They ruined that one big time.

    The maddowblog got ruined too. Both are victims of stupid people trying to maximize clicks rather than maximize readership.

  48. 48.

    JPL

    Earlier there was 40 percent off Husqvarna lawnmower. I read the reviews which were mostly positive, except for one which had zoysia. So I’ll stay with my old mower for now.

    @John Cole: Since you enjoy cooking, you might think about the anova, I sous vide, I mentioned.

  49. 49.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    I am on a strictly “not buying anything but food” kick right now seeing as DH and I (celebrated our 24th anniversary yesterday) are on a 3 year plan (well actually a 2 year 7 month plan at this point) to move back to England when he retires at age 60. He figured out that he can retire at 60 with 80% of his retirement check and he wants me away from this godawful healthcare system and back in the bosom of the NHS. So no buying anything that we don’t absolutely need and time to start having a boat load of yard sales on a regular basis so that we can downsize the hell out of all of the junk we have accumulated over 24 years.

    It is really going to be hard to figure out what to get rid of and what to keep but with shipping costs being what they are sentimental value only holds so much sway.

  52. 52.

    jl

    @catclub: Maybe packs of tapioca pudding are in the Amazone Prime sale. Cole is just doing some subliminal marketing. Or just being a truculent, yet strangely bland, ass. Hard to tell.

    Edit: but i didn’t know tapioca was a form of sex lube. The things you learn on this blog. Is THAT in the Amazon Prime sale?

  55. 55.

    Seanly

    @catclub: Off-brand Astroglide on sale with free Amazon Prime shipping would be a good purchase. What with the mandatory gay marriage and all.

  56. 56.

    beltane

    @Litlebritdifrnt: Lets hope David Cameron doesn’t do too much damage to the NHS over the next few years.

    We are also in the midst of a radical downsizing and have given away mountains of stuff, much of which had been given to me by my mother, a hoarder and devotee of yard sales. My rule is: if an item is not indispensable and/or loved unconditionally, it is going away. I do have a bag of my sons’ newborn clothes that will probably follow me around until I die, but that’s the exception.

  57. 57.

    Belafon

    @Mike J: Charles over at LGF changed his format because the Google search engine was favoring formats that looked more news oriented. What it ultimately meant on his was more articles on the front page before they fell off and a picture associated with each one, and a lot less boundary lines.

  59. 59.

    beltane

    @catclub: The latest word is that Tsipras is viewing tonight’s vote as a vote of confidence and may step down depending on the outcome.

  60. 60.

    ? Martin

    @catclub: Well, the IMF threw the first petrol bomb on this one.

    Nothing like asking the country to choose which form of suicide they prefer. We were much kinder to Germany in June 1945 than they have been to Greece.

  61. 61.

    Roger Moore

    @beltane:

    The latest word is that Tsipras is viewing tonight’s vote as a vote of confidence

    It’s hard to see how he wouldn’t. His election was all about dealing with the troika, so having his negotiated deal with them thrown out would absolutely be a vote of no confidence.

  62. 62.

    Pee Cee

    @Germy Shoemangler:

    Yes, they made Pierce’s site basically unusable on my tablet. Though it saddens me, I just don’t read Pierce anymore unless he’s quoted somewhere else.

  63. 63.

    Gimlet

    Lots of political news tonight

    Witnesses have told Mississippi state investigators that an unarmed black man died after being kept in a chokehold by a police officer for more than 20 minutes and denied CPR, according to his family’s attorneys, who said an autopsy confirmed he was fatally strangled.

    According to the attorneys, one witness alleged that Herrington said he was “going to get that nigger” seconds before confronting Sanders in Stonewall on the night of 8 July, and several said the officer was the aggressor. Police have described the encounter as “a fight”.

  64. 64.

    beltane

    My most recent Amazon purchase was some Dante-Nesti soap as a treat to myself on my birthday. While the items were in stock, they too two weeks to arrive which negated the whole birthday treat thing. Next time I need fancy soap I’ll order it from my usual supplier.

  65. 65.

    RaflW

    Speaking of cleaning out the warehouses, Gingrich and Santorum (among others) have released their latest FEC reports on 2012 remnants.

    Newt Gingrich’s 2012 presidential campaign still owes $4.6 million, per the latest filing. Santorum’s 2012 campaign still owes more than his 2016 has on hand!

    HA-ha, as the dear Nelson would say on the Simpsons.

  67. 67.

    jl

    @? Martin:

    ” Nothing like asking the country to choose which form of suicide they prefer. We were much kinder to Germany in June 1945 than they have been to Greece. ”

    But, hey, Greece is the one to blame for its Euro crisis!

  69. 69.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @jl: I look at how quickly we normalized relations with Germany and Vietnam, and then look at the freak out over Cuba, and realize I don’t understand the world at all.

  70. 70.

    Gimlet

    @Gimlet:

    More details

    The version of events given by witnesses, they said, is that Sanders was riding by a gas station on a horse-drawn buggy at about 10.30pm when he made a comment to Herrington, who had pulled over a driver. The attorneys said this driver had told them he was drunk and his registration tags had expired.

    The driver said his stop was abandoned when Sanders asked Herrington “Why don’t you leave that man alone?” or similar, said Lumumba. “According to the driver, once the officer saw Jonathan, his attention was piqued and he said: ‘I’m going to get that nigger.’”

    The attorneys said investigators from the MBI had informed them they were aware of the alleged racist remark and were in communication with the driver.

  71. 71.

    beltane

    @Roger Moore: The speeches being given in the Greek parliament are incredibly depressing. It’s like watching the lead-up to an unconditional military surrender.

    Also, Tspiras will step down if the majority of his party doesn’t back him regardless of whether or not the bailout packages passes.

  72. 72.

    beltane

    @Iowa Old Lady: It’s always personal with the Republicans. Fidel Castro is still alive. He was not assassinated, imprisoned, or driven into exile. In the mind of some of our compatriots, this means that Castro is laughing at them behind their backs.

  73. 73.

    dmsilev

    @? Martin: Hasn’t anyone told Trump that mimicking Austin Powers catchphrases became passe a decade or so ago?

    Maybe it’s a retro thing.

  74. 74.

    beltane

    Donald Trump’s main accomplishment was when he mainstreamed the concept of prenuptial agreements prior to his marriage to Marla Maples.

  75. 75.

    Felonius Monk

    @Tommy:

    I don’t own a single thing in the kitchen that will email me.

    This is your stove calling. Your water is boiling.

  76. 76.

    Brachiator

    @Tommy:

    Ordered a few things through Amazon, which I don’t normally use them, the past months for like Mother’s/Father’s Day. The shipping was off the chart. In fact at the time made me think they were doing it just to push me to Prime.

    I guess this might be possible, though it is a crappy tactic that won’t work.

    You mentioned a high shipping charge for an item. Don’t they usually show shipping a few times before you finally complete your order? If they didn’t, did you try to get an adjustment?

    I am a usually happy Prime customer. I will have many items delivered to my work address because it is more convenient. The only time I have had a problem was when they insisted on doing a fast one day delivery on Sunday, when the office is closed. Told them that they need some kind of indicator about weekends/Sundays.

    Once ordered a clothing item that turned out to be the wrong size. They gave me a refund and said I did not have to return the clothing item.

  77. 77.

    jl

    Jeb! and Walker seem pretty evenly matched in being able to make themselves appear ridiculous disgusting in public. Possible they owe their political careers to off-year state elections?

    Walker: I Meant The Scouts Ban On Gay Leaders ‘Protected’ Kids From Politics

    ” Presidential candidate and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) said on Wednesday that when he described the Boy Scouts ban on gay leaders as having “protected children” he meant that it had protected them from political debate. ”

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/scott-walker-gay-boy-scout-politics

  78. 78.

    The Moar You Know

    For all the folks who think it’s so cool to have someone else store their recordings so they never have to “buy” music again, this is what can happen when you don’t own the recording

    @boatboy_srq: Barnes & Noble deleted my copy of “The Communist Manifesto” off of every single Nook I have.

    I wasn’t exactly stunned as Amazon pulled the same stunt with “1984”, but I’ll tell you what – I went right back to print books and will never buy another e-book again. Fortunately I never got rid of my print library, and also I’m pretty glad I have all my music as hard copy as well.

  79. 79.

    Gimlet

    @jl:

    Possible they owe their political careers to off-year state elections?

    http://www.nationaljournal.com/against-the-grain/scott-walker-is-overstating-his-blue-state-appeal-20150713

    if voters from both parties had turned out at the same rates as in presidential elections in just the state’s three largest counties (Waukesha, Dane, and Milwaukee), the resulting surge in Democratic turnout would nearly wipe out Walker’s entire margin of victory in the state. Even more fascinating: Nearly all of the drop-off in non-presidential-year turnout in deeply-conservative Waukesha County came from Democrats. (Walker held nearly all—95 percent—of Mitt Romney’s Waukesha County vote total in the 2012 recall election. Democrat Tom Barrett managed to retain only 74 percent of President Obama’s 2012 support.)

  80. 80.

    Felonius Monk

    @John Cole:

    at the old folks home known as Balloon Juice.

    Isn’t that the place that’s run by a grumpy old (before his time) man?

    I’m sure all of us old folks here would be a lot mellower if we saw pictures of Steve and the various pups a little more often. Those pix always go good with the tapioca …and the oatmeal.

  85. 85.

    beltane

    @The Moar You Know: All my Project Gutenberg titles were deleted from my Kindle. Most of them were obscure 18th and 19th Italian language works that were not even available on Amazon in the first place. Now, I only buy actual books. If my Kindle hasn’t been tossed out, it’s languishing in a storage box somewhere. My library is one of my treasures and I did not appreciate Amazon stealing from it.

  86. 86.

    Mike J

    @beltane: I store my ebooks on my own server and I control exactly which books are synced on and off of my tablet.

    The cloud is just another name for “somebody else’s computers”. I’ve never understood why people want some random company controlling all their data when it’s trivial to do it yourself. For ebook management, download and install calibre. Runs on windows, linux, and many other OSs, supports dozens? hundreds? of different ereaders.

  87. 87.

    ? Martin

    Well, Crashplan is $6 a month, unlimited backups, which is way the fuck cheaper than buying book cases or any other form of physical storage. These other companies don’t control your backups, only you do.

  90. 90.

    JPL

    CBSN covered Major Garrett’ question… They opened with he seemed to be a little defensive about Major Garrett’s .. The app is on my phone and I was outside so might have heard wrong. I’m pretty sure they didn’t use the word uppity.
    I am looking for the video on line now.

  91. 91.

    SuperHrefna

    I did get a couple of good deals early this morning ( best: $45 of gift cards with bonus $10 credit, 2nd best: an Amazon fire stick for $25) but yeah, I agree this sale is an omnishambles, a festival of junk. In general I’m a happy Amazon customer ( except when I think of their labor practices) because I still love the magic of easily finding the obscure object of my desire just as much today as I did in 1998. I don’t want to go back to doing things the old way, I just wish we could get them to raise their prices and treat their workers right. I know, dream on, right? And I know I’m enabling them, but honestly, I just loooove shopping there … Pardon me while I dissolve into incoherent self justifications that don’t even convince me….

  93. 93.

    RaflW

    @jl: Uh huh. Stupid people usually do think other people will believe their idiot backpedaling.

    It really is hard for a conservative these days. All the old go-to social hot buttons seem broken.

  94. 94.

    JPL

    @JPL: Okay the person said struck a nerve.

    somehow, why wouldn’t it strike a nerve since Garrett was rude..

    I’m watching CBS evening news now. Garrett covered the news conference without mentioning his question.
    They covered it okay though.
    Now they are doing Bibi’s twenty four days and a drug dealing tossing drugs down a toilet. Bibi wants to go to war.

  96. 96.

    JPL

    I hit submit to soon.. Now on to Garrett’s question. Pelley said the President didn’t like it. He didn’t say uppity either. They didn’t show the part of the answer why you could not negotiate a nuclear deal along with the hostages. Since I watch CBS, I’m very disappointed.

  98. 98.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @JPL: If Bibi wants to “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb; Bomb, Bomb Iran”, he can do it on his own dime.

  99. 99.

    Roger Moore

    @JPL:

    Bibi wants to go to war.

    No. He wants us to go to war on his behalf. No point in doing it yourself when you can get your lackey to do it for you.

  100. 100.

    different-church-lady

    @The Moar You Know: I remember having a small online debate with someone about the benefits of physical media. They said, “When was the last time you took 15 movies, 500 books and your entire music library with you on a cross country flight?” And I responded with, “When was the last time anyone needed to?” I mean, it’s just five freakin’ hours; a single copy of the New Yorker would suffice.

  101. 101.

    Gimlet

    Politico

    Trump acolytes are, however, angry. Very angry. And many are agonizingly fearful about the future of the nation. They believe that vast changes to the country are being wrought in ways that are undemocratic, dishonest and perhaps even illegal.

    Trump, who seems perpetually angry, is an expression of the angst of conservatives who believe the United States has gotten so deep into a mess that a little extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. What they adore about Trump is that he is a pugilist who has emerged at a time when someone needs to start throwing punches.

    His blunt promise to stop illegal immigration touches on perhaps the conservatives’ deepest concern of all: that their culture and the Constitutional order are disintegrating with such rapidity that they hardly recognize the country they are living in. There is a sense of desperation that is fueling support for a proven achiever and fearless confrontationalist like Trump.

  105. 105.

    Gin & Tonic

    CNN is reporting that the Dutch safety board is laying part of the blame for the MH-17 shootdown on Malaysian Airlines, for not following safety warnings about flying in a conflict zone. But it also clearly and specifically blames a particular pro-Russian rebel group. Since the anniversary is next week, I wonder if the report is actually close to publication.

    Almost a shame BiP got the banhammer,

  106. 106.

    jl

    @JPL:

    ” Scott Pelley did push back and Bibi said ten years goes by fast. ”

    If you believe what Netanyahu says (and has repeatedly said many times for many years), they are always just a year away from pumping out nukes. Time doesn’t go by at all for Netanyahu for that old chestnut. But he, and his GOP buddies, don’t have the guts to say only thing to do is to start endless bombing campaign now. Instead they say ‘resolve’ and ‘sanctions’ will work wonders. That worked so well for Bush II. So stupid…

  108. 108.

    SuperHrefna

    @Roger Moore: Do you think he actually was working for the Kremlin? I used to think that was hyperbole, but ever since I read about the Kremlin troll factories I’ve had my doubts.

  110. 110.

    Roger Moore

    @SuperHrefna:

    Do you think he actually was working for the Kremlin?

    I don’t honestly know if he was or not. He could have been an ordinary troll or a paid one. I would think a paid troll would have tried harder to avoid the banhammer, but that’s purely speculation.

  111. 111.

    trollhattan

    @SuperHrefna:
    I believe so. Didn’t until somebody linked to prior comments from “Bob in Pacifica” who relentlessly trolled “CIA created AIDS” posts with identical zeal. It was trolling with a purpose and essentially by (unconvincing) script. Why here, I can’t guess.

  114. 114.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @beltane:

    After Hurricane Floyd I became really good at not accumulating crap but then memory fades and thrift store shopping results in accumulating crap. I have really got to pare down, most of the stuff in my house is stuff that I liked at the time but I now have no use for. Time for a clear out to end all clear outs.

  116. 116.

    Gin & Tonic

    @SuperHrefna: In some very specific cases he used historical terms that aren’t customary even for fairly well-informed “westerners.” He was clearly American, but went beyond “well-informed” or “geopolitically opinionated” in my view.

  118. 118.

    Roger Moore

    @trollhattan:

    Why here, I can’t guess.

    If it actually was a professional trolling organization, I would guess they’d have people trolling even third and fourth tier blogs. Balloon-Juice is big enough to be checked by Memeorandum, so I would assume it’s big enough for a serious trolling organization to target it.

  119. 119.

    trollhattan

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    Gotta say, if he lived in Portland and Pacifica he NEVER went outside. Absolutely nothing to indicate the posts weren’t emanating from a storage container.

  122. 122.

    boatboy_srq

    @The Moar You Know: @beltane: I think unaffiliated e-readers (iPads, and the various Sony/ASUS epaper devices) are going to be the only way for ebooks to survive. I have titles in my B&N library that I can’t download to either Nook though B&N insists they’re there. All the whizbang digital enhancements (hyperlinks for references, footnotes that trigger the relevant Web searches, etc) are nowhere near enough to compensate for having the primary content available at the whim of the vendor. My nine-year-old NAS is more reliable for data retrieval than this. And deleting independently purchased content is not acceptable, period. The trouble is that so many consumers of digital content will never notice all the stuff going on under the hood, so the manufacturers/distributors/whatever aren’t going to feel any pressure to do anything different.

  124. 124.

    shell

    @JPL: Ah, please. Garretts question was caarefully worded to be just one step shy of belligerent.

  127. 127.

    PaulW

    If you sign in to Amazon Smile, you can select a charity of your choice – LIKE YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY – and Amazon will donate a certain amount (no charge to you) based on certain purchases.

  130. 130.

    Gimlet

    C-SPAN is partnering with a handful of regional newspapers in early-voting states for a nationally televised forum with the Republican presidential candidates just days before Fox News Channel’s first scheduled debate. – Aug 3rd

  131. 131.

    JPL

    So I am paying attention to some of the new deals. There are several men’s watches coming up at 7:30.. If discounted enough, I might have found a xmas present.

  132. 132.

    Karen in GA

    shuffles in late, as usual

    I got a decent DSLR backpack for $50.

    looks around, sees very few people, none of whom are interested

    blinks

    turns and shuffles back out

  134. 134.

    Baud

    @Gimlet:

    C-SPAN is partnering with a handful of regional newspapers in early-voting states WWE for a nationally televised forum with the Republican presidential candidates just days before Fox News Channel’s first scheduled debate.

    This is what should happen.

  135. 135.

    J R in WV

    OK, on line again. Flash floods, second huge belt of storms Tuesday night, after trees downed and roads blocked by flooding mountain streams Monday night.

    Power off, since earl Tuesday afternoon. Generator running outside our house, other genset running at uplink site, so connected.

    Second post-op appointment with surgeon this afternoon, tape removed from incision, ouch! But all is good, cleared for start of physical therapy next week. I will be seeing the same therapist who worked with me on the first shoulder replacement last February with good success. I was told to expect 140 degrees of vertical motion, and achieved 156 degrees, so exceeded expectation.

    The second operation was quite a bit more difficult that the first one. They had trouble getting in and doing what they needed to do. They spoke of “pounding and pounding” to install new joint parts, and I have scars from retractors beside the actual incision. More swelling and pain than the first time, mostly over now, until therapy starts next week. They took all that very seriously by providing twice as much pain relieving medication as the last time. ouch….

    But the joint pain from bone on bone movement is gone. For the first time in at least a couple of years I’m (temporarily) pain free in that way. Yes, there is pain around the joint, and I can’t reach, push or pull with my left hand/arm. I told the doc that I was being careful to handle the cast iron cookware with my nearly recovered right arm, and he grinned, not really being sure I was being accurate.

    The power company has people from Ohio and Indiana in doing work to get the 50K people w/o power back up. The road to our neighborhood as the top layer of asphalt peeled off by the water, and some people’s houses were no doubt saturated up to several inches in the main floor. he Monday night storm was more violent, but the Tuesday night storm had prepared wet soil to work with, and so blew many more trees down than Monday’s.

    Everyone seems to be OK, even if their place is F’ed up, most of us built up on rises, but if your property was by a creek, that is where you built your house.

    Glad no one was swept away here! Hope power from the APCO folks comes back soon – uplink won’t be running all night, at all. Too loud for good sleep.

    Best to all you B-J commenteriat!!

  136. 136.

    Mike in NC

    @Gimlet: I’m waiting for a reporter to uncover some dirt on Trump. For all his antipathy towards The Browns, surely he’s forced himself at least once on some poor maid or waitress working at one of his establishments. Just fits his unsavory personality.

  137. 137.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @JPL: I saw an ASUS Transformer that seemed nice, but by the time I looked after it came up, it was refurbished and waitlisted(reminds me of college).

  139. 139.

    muddy

    @JPL: I liked when he said that the time delay was “long enough to flush it all down the toilet”, as though a nuke program is a bag of cocaine. That reference is as dated as his hairdo. Oooo, aluminum tubes! Jets and missiles “buried under the sands”! etc.

  141. 141.

    KG

    @Baud: Trump’s already been on the WWE (there was an angle a few years back where he bought Monday Night Raw from Vince McMahon). No way they go back to that well… what am I saying, it’s professional wrestling, they always go back to the well.

  144. 144.

    KG

    @Mike in NC: the problem with digging for dirt on Trump is there’s already enough in the public record worth recycling… you don’t even need to go looking for skeletons in the closet because we’ve seen so many already.

  145. 145.

    Poopyman

    @JPL: Probably because he was assigned a range of IP addresses to monitor and we were (one of) the most promising.

  150. 150.

    MomSense

    @Baud:

    IIRC he wrote something that got a lot of pushback from the other commenters. He hasn’t been back since.

  155. 155.

    boatboy_srq

    @Gin & Tonic: Thanks for the recommendation: I’ll add that to the list. The A&Ks are finally approaching affordable pricing, and the HiFiMAN stuff is getting excellent reviews. No home DAC, so whatever I get would be “it” – and I’m willing to drop a LITTLE more on a portable because of that. iBasso is on the list only because it (supposedly) supports 1TB of storage – which with my library would be VERY handy.

    @different-church-lady: The driver for digitizing (for me) was space constraints: my (late lamented) baby did NOT have storage space for the print and disc media (heck, the hanging lockers were barely enough for a basic professional wardrobe, and the fridge could only handle a week’s groceries) and I didn’t want to leave all the physical stuff in a locker onshore. Cross-country flying is one thing: four years afloat is something else, and with broadcast radio gone to hell in a handbasket one’s own recordings become less luxury and more necessity. Digital is great for small spaces.

  164. 164.

    Joel

    The damned TV deals sold out in like 5 minutes. That was pretty much all I was looking at.

  167. 167.

    Steeplejack

    I ordered a few things on Amazon today, none affected by Prime Day, as far as I could tell. Remembered to go through Cole’s portal, so this site should get a bit of vig.

    One item was a 1½-quart slow cooker that I’ve been eyeballing for quite a while to add to my hodgepodge batterie de cuisine. (The joys of cooking for one.) It usually hovers around $20, but today it was $14.99, so I finally pulled the trigger. And then, to make up a decent-sized order (even though I get free shipping), I added some Celestial Seasonings “Magic Mint” tea (spearmint/peppermint) and a three-pack of Champion black crew socks.

    Suddenly realized a week ago that I needed some new everyday socks, went to Target and got my usual Gold Toes, and when I got home I found they have gone down in quality—way thinner than the ones that are wearing out, and they just felt kind of “off.” Another small area of life affected by race-to-the-bottom manufacturing. Go figure. So I’m doing a test of the Champions, based on good Amazon reviews.

    Anybody got basic black men’s socks they love, let me know.

    ETA: Just looked at the time stamps and see that I’m pretty late to this thread. Oh, well, like that’s never happened before. I guess I’ll check back tomorrow for J R in WV’s comment. LOL.

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