Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

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

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

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

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

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

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

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

Usually wrong but never in doubt

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

T R E 4 5 O N

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

In my day, never was longer.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

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87Comments

  3. 3.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    I’m at the airport in Detroit headed for Tuscaloosa. Pretty early for this routine.
    Weather has been fine. Saw the full moon rise last night while driving home from dinner with my sisters.
    Very cool.

  4. 4.

    Betty Cracker

    Yesterday I joined the ranks of thousands — perhaps millions — of parents who foolishly tried their children’s new hover board and fell on their asses.

    Today we’re going to see Star Wars if I can reserve good seats — otherwise we’ll wait. Then later my sister and I are having dinner with a childhood friend who is in town for the holidays. Should be fun!

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Very nice shot! Did Santa bring you any new camera equipment?

  5. 5.

    Mustang Bobby

    We had a nice family Christmas here in Cincinnati, starting off with my older brother and his wife at my sister’s house with her son, DIL, and grandson, then went to see a movie (“Brooklyn,” thumbs up), then over to my parents’ place for dinner and Skyping with my younger brother and his family in Seattle. All went well; no family squabbles, and since we’re all on the same page politically there was none of the crazy uncle stuff at the table. I had to pass up sharing a glass of wine from 1968, but it had a nice nose.

    Happy Boxing Day if you, uh, box.

  6. 6.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Betty Cracker: Thanks. I’m getting some new stuff(a new lens and a bag), but Santa’s sleigh was delayed(I blame Obama).

    ETA: As far as Christmas here in the Cave went; things went well, dinner turned out good, except the roast was a bit overdone, and the kid was very happy with my gift of a Camelbak(she was thinking of getting one herself). We’re planning a hike in the next week or so possibly Echo Mountain.

  7. 7.

    Betty Cracker

    @BillinGlendaleCA: We had the opposite problem; our roast was under-cooked (I tried a new method — never again!), but at least that was fixable. Echo Mountain sounds like a lovely hike. We’ve got some hiking and perhaps canoeing on the agenda next week up at the Suwannee River. Looks like our weather will be more winterish then (60s).

  8. 8.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Betty Cracker: My problem with the roast was I don’t really have an accurate meat thermometer. Madame questioned why i didn’t use the one she bought and is till in the packaging. I pointed out that it just has doneness levels and not the actual temperature. I ordered a new one that will give me accurate temperature readings.

  9. 9.

    Gimlet

    MARIETTA, Ga. (CBS Atlanta) — What some are chalking up as simply a “faulty coating” has others believing that a divine phenomenon has touched the window of one local church — along with the hearts of its parishioners.

    That’s because an image that bears a striking resemblance to the Virgin Mary seems to have appeared on a portion of glass at the Transfiguration Catholic Church in Marietta, bringing throngs of onlookers eager to see what some believe to be a Christmas miracle.

  11. 11.

    Betty Cracker

    @BillinGlendaleCA: You’re doing the right thing; I know I’d incinerate every roast without an accurate temperature reading. We’ve got the type that has a probe that leads to an external monitor and also has a remote monitor that pairs with it. It’s super handy if you do a lot of smoking and don’t want to have to hover around the smoker for many hours at a stretch.

  13. 13.

    Raven

    I’ve been throwing up every couple of hours since midnight. We ate a big buffet but I tried to go easy. I have the gumbo almost ready but I’ll have to turn it over to my bride, food don’t smell too good.

  21. 21.

    Betty Cracker

    @Raven: Wow, that’s awful. Sounds like food poisoning (the predictable intervals of barfing), but I guess you’d know if it was that since you ate dinner with a lot of other people. In any case, feel better!

  22. 22.

    Baud

    I have Holidays turned on in my Google calendar and today is not listed as Wren Day or Boxing Day but Day After Christmas Day. :-(

  23. 23.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Raven:

    I remember it well! Hadn’t thought of that in years. I wonder what ever happened to that crazy lady.

    Hope you’re feeling better soon, Raven. Today — assuming my cousin has recovered sufficiently from her fall — we are having our deferred Christmas celebrations.

  24. 24.

    debbie

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    There’s nothing worse than a group food poisoning. My cousin felled 22 of 25 family members with her matzoh ball soup more than 15 years ago, and I still get a bit nervous every Seder.

  27. 27.

    Matt McIrvin

    The paging seems not to be working on the site: I go the next page and I just get the front page under another URL.

  29. 29.

    Satby

    We should pass a law that Christmas should only fall on a Friday so that we always have a full weekend to recover!
    We went to my son’s in-laws for dinner yesterday and they went all out to make the girls feel welcome and included, with gifts and halal food too. The girls just glowed. Their very first Christmas was a big success.

  30. 30.

    Peale

    I’m in Kyoto and will have a good trip as long as I don’t move, lift anything or laugh suddenly. Advil or Aleve or both, I’m not sure which.

    The good news is that neither hotel so far has any English news service, so while I’m out of the loop, I’m also not being misinformed for a change.

  34. 34.

    Scapegoat

    MIL is up from Florida and am staying with SIL as Mrs. Scapegoat and I await the return to our house on Jan 1. Delicious meal last night with gifts galore. Watched Tim Burton’s Nightmare before Christmas for the first time. Can’t believe I never saw this brilliant movie!

    The only hitch is that my lovely bride, now at 34 weeks with our little billygoat, is having severe leg “jerks” when trying to sleep, along with terrible congestion. Any suggestions from seasoned breeders for us n00bs so she can get a bit of sleep?

  35. 35.

    ThresherK

    Fine meal, nice to see everybody. Only one Crazy Uncle Liberty* joke.

    And from the downstairs thread: I first heard “Song for a Winter’s Night” on Due South. A bit amazed that my now-wife didn’t introduce me to it beforehand, as she’s a big Sarah M fan.

    Perhaps the only bright spot on commercial holiday radio’s playlist is that I heard Gordon Lightfoot’s original twice as often this year as last, and more times than the wrist-breaking “Dominic the Christmas Donkey”.

    (*H/T of course to Driftglass)

    Today, back to car-shopping. I gotta get something, and with tags, by perhaps late Wednesday, or it’ll screw everything up. Trying to figure out what $4000 Volvo would only need $2000 of repairs before summer (a figure I can live with) or if an actual $6000 specimen won’t need less. Plus coordinating a seller’s sked with a good mechanic is not easy.

  36. 36.

    PurpleGirl

    @ThresherK: After you mentioned WQXR’s plans for yesterday’s music, I put it on and turned off the TV. It was a nice day with beautiful music. Thank you. I just don’t think about playing music as much as I once did.

  37. 37.

    Satby

    @PurpleGirl: I play my local classical station almost all day, except Saturdays (it’s based at a Seventh Day Adventist college), but have had almost all music off for the last two weeks both at home and in the car. The nonstop schlocky Christmas music was especially annoying to me this year. Looked forward to turning my morning classical back on today, then remembered it was Saturday, with religious programs.

  40. 40.

    ThresherK

    @PurpleGirl: I don’t know if you follow the trials and tribulations of the radio industry. I was a hack DJ in college; that’s why I’m into that, and RadioInsight fora tell me a lot of things.

    Many stations are being taken over by the Christianists, or running infomercials, simply to stay afloat. There are other, better developments, like enough concentrated listenership to make advertising (and therefore stations) viable in Mandarin, Korean and such, which wasn’t the case a dozen years ago. Also on the plus side: All the clutching at their declining numbers with their fingernails can’t hide the fact that old conservative farts are aging out of the demographic as “extant”, making the programming and advertising for the right-wingnut-o-sphere a much less rewarding go.

    Terrestrial radio doesn’t have an easy job to begin with. People in EFGoldman’s age bracket are not valued by advertisers. But the crummy limited playlist of holiday music doesn’t help.

    I’m fairly new to having broadband and it’s really reshaping my habits. WQXR used to be a radio station I could hear at my home closer to NYC years ago. Now it’s changed to FM–less range–and I’ve moved further away, but I can hear it even if it’s not on my vintage 7-tube Philco.

  41. 41.

    Steeplejack

    Today is the first day I haven’t had holiday obligations in about a week, so I am staying home with the housecat, resolutely doing nothing productive, and may not get fully dressed. Just watched (well, sort of, in the background) Stoke City put a beatdown on Manchester United, and now the improbably Premier League-leading Leicester City are facing Liverpool. About to put on some bacon for breakfast (with scrambled eggs).

    I saw The Hateful Eight in 70 mm last night. Visually gorgeous, pretty good—somewhat self-indulgent—but recommended only for Tarantino fans.

    Happy (inter-)holidays to all Juicers!

  43. 43.

    Amir Khalid

    @Steeplejack:
    People are wondering aloud if United are going to sack van Gaal before Monday and hire Jose Mourinho. I suppose they have reason to do the former by now. But unless someone just gave the Glazer-in-charge a massive whack upside the head with the stupid stick, I can’t see the latter happening. He’s not a manager you want for a long hitch with a club: he gets fantastic results for two seasons, and then the players start to hate him. Mourinho’s Chelsea have been horrible on the pitch this season. Then they won their first post-Jose match easily, leading to suspicion that they’d been throwing matches to get him fired. Jose’s been an arsehole on the touchline for Chelsea all season — so much so that he’s been fined, banned from a stadium, and hit with a lawsuit by the first-team doctor whom he drove out of the club. Man United would be better off if they gave the job to Ryan Giggs. He’s not an arsehole, the players trust him because he was only recently one of them, and he’s a United man through and through.

  45. 45.

    PurpleGirl

    @Satby:
    @ThresherK:

    I had a long answer which I lost and I can’t remember all that I wrote. Years ago I listened to WNCN for classical music and WNEW-FM for rock/folk. I particularly liked many of both stations announcers. (I was late-night fan of Alison Steele.) When WNCN was sold and the programming changed, I tried WQXR as it was then but I didn’t like their programming. Yesterday’s focus on sacred and orchestral showcased a lot of what I like. I made some attempts at times to find other stations but haven’t found ones I can really get into. And I hate talk-radio and all-days news.

    @Ultraviolet Thunder: Can you sign into an internet radio station and still do other things? The speakers on my netbook aren’t very good and I have to use headphones, which aren’t very comfortable.

  48. 48.

    Lahke

    I’m visiting family near Sacramento and will have to go to Barnes and Noble first thing. The book I ordered delivered for my sister had the right title on the packing slip ( Our Man in Charleston), but what arrived was the latest David Brooks. Must be a right-wing plot to boost his numbers.

  49. 49.

    Suzanne

    @Scapegoat: When I was pregnan with Spawn2, I had that horrible congestion and nonstop nosebleeds. My ENT gave me Flonase after a disaster with Rhinocort. He also said that small amounts of Afrin were Ok until the Flonase built up to full effectiveness.

    IME, OBGYNs have no idea what to do with this stuff. Go to a specialist.

    As for the leg twitches, get her some body pillows to put in between you two.

  50. 50.

    Schlemazel

    On the Empire Builder headed to the city of big shoulders. Taking advantage of our sleeper and enjoying a gray day as we run along the river

  51. 51.

    WereBear

    @Lahke: People being tricked into buying it. I could see that happening.

    A tiny bit of work this morning, remotely done, and then I don’t have anything I need to do. The cats are enjoying my presence greatly.. Even though we didn’t get them any presents.

    Except leaving the wrapping paper out to hide in. That is very popular.

  52. 52.

    Steeplejack

    @PurpleGirl:

    Can you sign into an internet radio station and still do other things?

    Yes, just keep the radio station going in one tab and do whatever you want in other tabs.

    The speakers on my netbook aren’t very good and I have to use headphones, which aren’t very comfortable.

    The only flaw of my little ThinkPad X130e is the anemic speakers, which I remedied with the excellent Oontz Angle 3. I didn’t get it for the water resistance. It’s very compact (about 5" long) and yields amazing sound for such a small package. If your computer doesn’t have Bluetooth, it comes with a cord to plug into the headphone jack. Also works great with a tablet or cell phone.

  53. 53.

    ThresherK

    @PurpleGirl: I was not into the rock and roll when WNEW-FM had its heyday, but I lived too far away to receive it anyway. I had a strange adolescence, music-wise, and it would not have been my cup of tea were I closer,

    I have read a couple of good books about exactly how new and different it was, how important, when the curve of technology and demographics turned FM into the place for music and AM the remnants.

    WNCN I don’t remember. I also don’t have the breadth and depth of knowledge about classical broadcasting, or classical music itself, as I do for standards/jazz/theater music. Has WQXR trimmed its playlist for the worse since it was turned into a non-commercial station?

    In my area New England Public Radio, NEPR, is very easy to receive and broadcasts classical music pretty much all day, and jazz pretty much all night. They have a second station for the talk stuff; that’s becoming more the thing with bigger NPR affilitates, and for stations that don’t make a lot of their talk/news programming, it’s an upgrade from having the overwhelming claptrap from the mothership just bigfoot the one big signal in the area. But I couldn’t tell you if NEPR’s music programming has been holding a good standard or just becoming repetitive, however.

  54. 54.

    ruemara

    Happy Boxing Day! This is where we celebrate recycling all those boxes our gifts came in, right?

    I’m trying to wrap titles and other vfx today, so I can go see Star Wars tomorrow. I know we have some graphics folks in the Juiceitariat, so if anyone has a suggestion on how to set up a particle system to have a slow rain of petals going down, I’d be grateful. I’ve gotten the PNG into the particle emitter just fine, but the velocity and birth rate are not slowing down to something correct. There used to be a flying cow plug in for AE that let you change the cow to another graphic but that was years ago. Any guidance, the nym at gmail is how to contact me. Been deviling myself with this for days.

    Movies. Where you spend two months on 2 seconds.

    Other than that, I’m going to start burning off the carbtopia that was yesterday, with a bit of a run.

  55. 55.

    Steeplejack

    In other developments, I am taunting death by cooking bacon (well) past its “best by” date. But the package was unopened, and the whole point of curing meat is to preserve it for a long time, so what the heck. And I really wanted bacon for breakfast. I’ll try to post from the E.R. if this goes sideways.

  61. 61.

    raven

    Man, I can’t figure out what thread is what! I slept for 3.5 hours and now family is showing up for the gumbo that I can’t stand to smell! My Facebook tells be that there are quite a few folks with the stomach bug.

  63. 63.

    PurpleGirl

    @ThresherK: I don’t very clearly remember WQXR when the NY Times owned it. There was more opera and some talk shows I think. It just wasn’t a replacement for WNCN in my mind. The City’s station wasn’t as easy to tune in. When the record collection of WNCN was sold, that was really the end because it couldn’t be replaced. I lost contact with the NYC radio scene.

    @Steeplejack: The speakers look interesting. I’ll consider getting them.

    Have a good day everyone. I gotta go out for a bit.

  64. 64.

    Satby

    @raven: it rampaged through this part of MI two weeks ago or so, the good news if it’s the same bug is that it doesn’t hang on more than 48 hours. Hope you’re better faster!

  65. 65.

    raven

    @Satby: Thanks, I just sort of on the edge now so I’m going to stay in the basement and watch football on my iPad. We do have to drive back to Georgia in the am so it WILL be finished!

  67. 67.

    delk

    Growing up in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood, we threw walnuts at each other on St Stephen’s Day.

  70. 70.

    chopper

    did the whole Chinese food/movie thing which is getting harder and harder these days thanks to the goyim.

  71. 71.

    scav

    @delk: Are there other necessary ingredients for the event? Is it licit for a Chicagan in entirely different yards to toss nuts indiscriminately, or are walnuts required?

  75. 75.

    scav

    @raven: But will I be able to reap it afterward?

    And ha ha! As I’m currently in a Russyn bubble and of other slavic heritage, I think I can get away with the walnut tossing, even without a back-of-the yards heritage!

  76. 76.

    jurassicpork

    The Kindle version of my newest historical thriller, Gods of Our Fathers, just launched on Christmas Eve and you can find it here for just $4.99. I’m not publicizing this on my blog so my stalker from Utah doesn’t buy a copy (then immediately get a refund) just to pre-emptively write a one star hit piece and tell his fanboy trolls to do the same. As he has with every single one of my other titles.

  77. 77.

    debbie

    @chopper:

    She makes it the night before in a huge vat kind of pot (she goes to a second Seder at her in-laws the next night, so she makes enough for 50—60). Apparently, she was running behind and covered and refrigerated it before letting it cool down as much as she normally would have.

    A chef friend of my brother’s said this should never be done. Those extra hours of warmth inside the pot enable all kind of bacterial growth.

    Prior to that Seder, her soup was the best I’ve ever had (including my mom’s, grandmother’s, NYC deli, etc.).

  80. 80.

    Scapegoat

    @Suzanne: Yeah, she’s been using flonase and it does help, but not enough, sadly. The leg twitching may be related to low iron, so we’ve been bumping that up.

    Gotta wonder who designed the comfort division for this pregnancy thing – seems like the master may have left this detail to an apprentice.

  81. 81.

    Scapegoat

    Just went out to the car to discover that Santa apparently “re-gifted” our two mountain bikes to someone else last night. :-(

    Apparently the locks on a Thule rack are more ornamental than functional.

  82. 82.

    sempronia

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Do not go to Echo Mountain on a weekend day if you can help it. The Yelpers have discovered it, and it’s like Disneyland in the San Gabriels with Crossfit fanatics on the weekend.

  83. 83.

    Germy

    @Scapegoat: yes, xmas is a big day for thieves. The tv news had surveillance footage of people stealing packages off of porches. There was one story where people were leaving decoy packages with tracking devices so the police could nab them.

    A few days ago, about 5:30 a.m. I heard the “SNAP” of my front gate closing. Someone had been prowling around the side of our house, probably looking for something to take. Santa-Opposites, I call them.

  85. 85.

    Scapegoat

    Yeah…. House insurance is good. Car insurance is less so. We’re visiting my SIL so this could be interesting.

    Fortunately, it’s only “stuff” and nobody was hurt. Guess I won’t be riding this weekend!

  86. 86.

    Snarkworth

    Speaking of brandishing almonds, I received a gift of marzipan, the kind shaped and painted to look like little fruits. The oranges have that pebbled texture, and the strawberries have tiny dots where the seeds would be.
    *swoon*

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