Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

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

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

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

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

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

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / LGBTQ Rights / Gay Rights are Human Rights / Friday Night Party Open Thread

Friday Night Party Open Thread

by | 82 Comments

This post is in: , ,

And while you’re at it, thank all the gods and your parents that you’re smart enough to understand towels:

…DudeRobe isn’t just a robe, though there is one of those. It’s an entire lineup of towel-lined loungewear—from robes and hoodies to shorts and pants—designed for bros. Because apparently normal robes are just too ladylike for true dudes. No, seriously: The brand’s Kickstarter ad actually says, point blank, “Bathrobes are too girly.” Wow….

And yet, almost five hundred aspiring idiots signed up for this on Kickstarter. What percentage do you wanna bet have used the phrase ‘No homo’ un-ironically?

Reader Interactions

82Comments

  1. 1.

    efgoldman

    Last day of Pride month. Don’t forget to draw a rainbow on your doorpost before sundown so Mike Pence passes over your house.

    Now THAT is REALLY funny!
    Too bad the asshole will never know about it.

    There aren’t enough looking glasses in the cosmos to go through, this year.

  2. 2.

    lamh36

    @JoyAnnReid 1h1 hour ago
    More
    Hearing WH staff are livid at the Melania statement on Trump’s Mika tweet (written by her staff, which basically does what Trump wants)…

    Was offline most of the day…first cause I was sleeping in late, 2nd cause I was cleaning the house, 3rd cause my cable provider had an internet/cable outage…so…

    What did Melania statement say?

  3. 3.

    Omnes Omnibus

    I want a silk robe like all the dudes had in 1930s movies. Except I want it in color.

  7. 7.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @lamh36:

    I just love this picture of MLK!

    Oh, that is wonderful! V for Victory and Flippin’ the Bird, all in one! Love it!!

  11. 11.

    Jeffro

    Tell me that a statement this declarative from a national Dem wouldn’t spark all kinds of 2020 speculation, I don’t care if it’s the clerk of the peace in East Yonder, Iowa:

    (and no I’m not nominating J-Rubs…just sayin’…)

    By now most plugged-in news watchers know that with his health-care bill going down in flames, the North Korea crisis percolating, a special prosecutor investigating both the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia and President Trump’s own very public attempts to obstruct the investigation, Trump chooses to tweet two obnoxious, gross and misogynistic tweets in retort to criticism from “Morning Joe’s” two anchors. You can care to read them if you like; we find it unnecessary to amplify them further. His spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, asked about the tweets on the administration’s state TV, Fox News, blithely declared that he “will not be allowed to be bullied by liberal media or liberal elites in Hollywood or anywhere else.” The president is once again a victim of bullying, the poor dear. For the umpteenth time, we are obliged to ask what this suggests and whether it matters.

    I interrupt this quote to throw out an LOL

    This time, maybe wearied from the routine and quite certain the president’s popularity is sinking like a stone, notable Republicans told him to clam up. Sen. Ben Sasse (Neb.) tweeted: “Please just stop. This isn’t normal and it’s beneath the dignity of your office.” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) expressed a similar sentiment: “Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America.” And Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), whose vote Trump needs to pass a health-care bill, responded, “This has to stop – we all have a job – 3 branches of gov’t and media. We don’t have to get along, but we must show respect and civility.” Several Republican House members chimed in as well. So far no word from GOP leadership, which was pleading for more civility in the wake of the horrific shooting of GOP House members at a baseball field.
    …
    Update: House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) did speak up, but in the mildest way possible. “Obviously, I don’t see that as an appropriate comment,” Ryan said. “What we’re trying to do around here is improve the tone and the civility of the debate. And this obviously doesn’t help do that.” Ryan, let’s not forget, stuck with Trump as the line of defamed, mocked and vilified victims of his verbal abuse grew longer. Like with so many other Republicans now morally compromised, any criticism he might mumble underscores the lack of moral stature within the GOP.

    President Trump’s latest outbursts are not part of a brilliant strategy. He gains nothing, at a time when his grasp of his job is openly questioned. He gains no allies in the health-care debate. He reminds the country that Republicans who chose to ignore or rationalize this kind of behavior will go down as moral quislings. He reminds us that the conservative evangelicals who embraced him are not exemplars of moral or religious behavior. They are apologists and tribalists who rejoice in his exacting revenge on “elites.” No upside comes from this behavior; it’s the reaction of a man-child who cannot contain his belligerence.

    As for Sanders, she joins the legions of those who will do anything, defend anything, justify anything for their moments(s) in the White House. Patriotism, decency, honor? These have no place in their calculus. We need shed no tears when they are humiliated, undercut and eventually fired by their boss. They’ve made their pact with the devil and deserve no sympathy.

    If these tweets fortify his base, that speaks volumes about those who would be buoyed by such conduct. But that’s an exercise in diminishing returns. He is shedding support from those who see him for what he is and retain reason and decency in their political judgments.

    Does this indicate his mental unfitness to serve? Yes, but there have been dozens of signals he is, as Sasse put it, “not normal.”

    What is to be done? We’d applaud if Republican leaders rebuked him in some formal way (a resolution perhaps). But don’t hold your breath. Opponents of the president and defenders of democratic norms and simple decency should fortify themselves and redouble their efforts. They’ve been reminded who is in the Oval Office and the damage he does to our society on a daily basis.

    pick up the baton, Dems…you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by going on the national news/Twitter/Facebook/whatever every single day and beating the Trumpov admin about the head with the Bat of Truth!

  15. 15.

    Amaranthine RBG

    Wait, if you use the phrase no-homo, that means you are gay, right?

    Because the phrase itself is ironic because if you are engaged in an activity that sufficiently resembles gay sex, that you need to qualify it, then that means you are gay.

    So why would it be better to say it ironically instead of un-ironically.

  17. 17.

    efgoldman

    @Jeffro:

    Tell me that a statement this declarative from a national Dem wouldn’t spark all kinds of 2020 speculation, I don’t care if it’s the clerk of the peace in East Yonder, Iowa:

    As much as I can’t stand her politics, especially the Israel uber alles part, she’s been slagging on Citron Shitweasel since the primaries, consistently.
    Once he’s gone, I suspect she’ll revert to type.

  18. 18.

    Jeffro

    @efgoldman: Yeah well, let’s shamelessly lift her prose and use it to (verbally) beat goopers about the head with it as long as we can. She can revert down the road if she wants.

  20. 20.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    I’d like to see a front pager do something on this horseshit voter fraud shit. One of the things that drives me over the edge is that Kris Kobach and all these assholes are always going on and on and on about how they need these bigtime investigations to find the proof that’s there, and they need names of voters and Social Security numbers and voting histories and addresses and birthdays and all that shit, and we all know that this is just voter intimidation. It has nothing to do with fraud, which they know doesn’t happen.

    We know it doesn’t happen because if it truly were happening, Kobach or von Spakovsky or any of these other shitstains could find all the proof they need in a week. All they have to do is to go to any courthouse in any county seat in any county in any state in the U.S. and take a week going through the list of who voted in the last election and comparing it with the death rolls for the last year or (if they want to be extra-special thorough) two. If there’s any fraud, hundreds of names will be on both lists. This isn’t hard to do. Shit, if Kobach is too lazy to bother with the hassle, he can send unpaid interns and let them do it for free.

    This is something that I have brought up over and over with people and on Facebook and places like that, but I haven’t yet see anybody with more influence make this point, which I think is fairly obvious, anywhere else. Somebody needs to hammer this point over and over again until everybody understands this. There’s no way to commit the kind of voter fraud these frauds are telling us is happening all over the country without leaving proof all over the place, namely, the fact that people are voting after they die. This is, as I said, all on records that anybody can go and look at. There’s no way to know just from the records who committed the fraud, but the fact of the crime will be there, and that’s all they need. But they aren’t even looking for this, because they know it isn’t there. Somebody needs to get this out more widely.

  21. 21.

    efgoldman

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    You bastard. I still want one.

    You, too, can get paid high six figures for tweeting/blogging about the most important political issue of our time… in emojis!
    Oh, and BTW the happy ones mean that the pile of pig shit is on the way to passage, the sad ones mean it’s going down.
    Fits right in with a four-year-old manbaby in the WH, dunnit?

  22. 22.

    maeve

    Off topic – but I called the Alaska Lieutenant Gov office ( the Lt Gov office oversees the office of elections) and they said they are not sending the info requested – the person I talked to (Sherri) was polite but she had obviously had these calls before – so yeah us!

    BTW – in Alaska the Lt. Gov. is a democrat – the gov is indepedent – they are not elected separately but in the last election the the dems decided they couldn’t win and withdrew from the gov race w/ the alaska dem candidate running as lt. gov – slow progress but progress — they won.

  24. 24.

    SiubhanDuinne

    At some point in the last few months, I donated a small — I mean really small, like probably $50 all told — amount of money to a fund for Dem candidates for various offices in states across the U.S.

    Since 6:00 a.m. yesterday morning, I have received 83 fundraising emails from mostly people I’ve never heard of.

    I’m all for supporting good Dem candidates at the local/state level, but come the fuck ON. I’ll probably spend close to an hour tonight unsubscribing from these mailing lists, and feeling all guilty and resentful and churlish about it the entire time.

  25. 25.

    efgoldman

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    One of the things that drives me over the edge is that Kris Kobach and all these assholes are always going on and on and on about how they need these bigtime investigations

    Among many other things, he deserves merciless mocking because one of the states which can’t/won’t reply is Kansas. Secretary of State is a lying sack of shit RWNJ klown named… Kris Kobach!
    When bigger assholes are found, RWNJs will be them.

  26. 26.

    khead

    What is increasingly obvious to everyone, even the media, is that the Trump administration is just in complete chaos, no one is really in charge, most of the agencies and staff positions are missing personnel, let alone qualified personnel who know things, and it’s sort of just a slow motion disaster. It’s kind of like when a well run business gets sold out to a bunch of idiots who know nothing about business, and everyone keeps trying to get in touch with the people who used to run things, but they are long gone, no one has been hired to replace them, and the phones don’t get answered or if they do they get answered by one of the new owner’s kids who has no idea what the hell is going on.

    A little late to responding to Cole’s earlier thread. Had to do some stuff today. But I just wanted to point out that – based on this description – the United States is now Sears.

  28. 28.

    Mike J

    I’m just glad that Esquire has incredibly stupid web people. When I clicked on their link, no pics showed up, presumably because I whitelist javascript, and they aren’t on it. If your site is broken without javascript, u r dum.

  32. 32.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    This paragraph unites pretty much everyone who hated Hillary:

    Indeed, they made it quite clear to me that it made no difference to them who hacked the emails or why they did so, only that the emails be found and made public before the election.

  33. 33.

    maeve

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    Just use a throw away gmail hotmail whatever address which you can view or not view at your leisure – I have a 2 hotmail addresses I:ve had since the 90s – once “i never want to view any thing from” – the other “I will view but only at my leisure” – in addition to my personal (and my professional) email which I don’t loosely disclose.

    Thats i addition to forms I fill out which require an email – in which case I enter [email protected]

  34. 34.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    @Adam L Silverman: @efgoldman:

    Well, the real point, I think, is that the proof is out there for anybody to find if they care enough to look. It would take a week. One week, and there would be all the fucking proof these people need to shut me and every other Democrat up forever. That’s the real point. If this is happening, any fucking person in the U.S. could break this story. Anybody. Most people who hear about voter fraud don’t really understand how to go about proving it’s happened. I’ve heard people say something along the lines of, “Well, the problem is that it’s really hard to find the people who are doing this, that’s why it’s so hard to prove, that’s why we need i.d. laws, so we can catch these people. They’re getting away with it and we can’t stop them.”

    But that misses the point by five mines. Nobody needs to find out who did the crime to prove that somebody did it. Whether a crime happened and who committed it are two different things, and we don’t need to find the criminals to prove that a crime happened. We don’t need to find the murderer to prove that somebody got murdered. A body with a bullet in its head will do that. Somehow, the fact needs to seep out into the minds of Americans that this isn’t happening because there’s no evidence of a crime, and we know that because the crime is easy as hell to prove.

  35. 35.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: It is a fascinating post. Remember, Peter Smith was involved in creating the “Bill Clinton had a black son out of wedlock” conspiracy theory as his part of the Arkansas Project. Despite a DNA test determining that the young man in question is not President Clinton’s son, Bannon tried to bring him to one of the debates last Fall.

  38. 38.

    efgoldman

    @khead:

    based on this description – the United States is now Sears.

    Could be worse. Could be Montgomery Ward.

  39. 39.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    @Adam L Silverman: Thank you. I think every last American who bitches about “voter fraud” who hasn’t bothered to take a day and a half of their time to go to their courthouse and find the proof of the fraud they know is happening needs a serious beating. These people think people are stealing their country and they can’t even be bothered to do the minimal work to bring the proof to light. Anybody who found this proof would be a hero, set for life, with a show on Fox News. We need to scream from the rooftops that this proof is just waiting to be found, and then tell them to go get it, again and again, until these people shut the hell up about it.

  40. 40.

    efgoldman

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I just mark them as spam. I hope that doesn’t make me a bad person.

    They go to my spam folder, too. But they stopped dead the day after GA-06.

  41. 41.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman: (paraphrasing) “suddenly the fact that they were trying to get these emails to Flynn through a cut-out seemed ominous”

    Um

    Yup

    Looking forward to that Truth & Reconciliation Commission in April 2019…

  43. 43.

    efgoldman

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    I’ve heard people say something along the lines of, “Well, the problem is that it’s really hard to find the people who are doing this, that’s why it’s so hard to prove, that’s why we need i.d. laws….”

    It’s really hard to find unicorns and leprechauns, too, for the same reason.
    Holy shit, but people are assholes!

  47. 47.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @lamh36:

    I’ve not seen that photo before; MLK looks ebullient! He had more substance and grace in his shadow than the entire Trump clan combined.

  48. 48.

    Jeffro

    @gene108: True.

    And yet there are ways of busting that framing, I think. Either pressure the media to start asking Rs what they think of these comments, or pressure the Rs themselves, or get creative with media buys and outreach and social media, or heck…just run someone for the GOP nomination in 2020 as a ‘normal’ Republican. The fact that it would look like a stunt would only point out how far the GOP is from whatever moorings it ever had.

    I like it.

  50. 50.

    Mnemosyne

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    The problem is more that, especially at the beginning, they got voter ID laws by presenting it as a belt-and-suspenders precaution: Hey, everyone has a driver’s license or state ID, so why not just have them show it when they vote? And, as Kay has noted before, the judges just nodded along with that because they didn’t know anyone who doesn’t have a state-issued photo ID, so they couldn’t imagine how it could be a hardship for a US citizen to get one.

  51. 51.

    Mike in DC

    @Adam L Silverman:

    At the very minimum, indicates a desire to collude with the Russians. Seems like one could convey a quid pro quo suggestion on a variety of less than explicit or direct ways.

  53. 53.

    japa21

    @Mnemosyne: Yes, it sounds harmless, just like term limits has a certain appeal to some people. My basic response to people is simply, “So it is all right with you if 100 properly registered and legitimate voters are not allowed to vote because they don’t have the appropriate ID just so that maybe, if we’re really lucky, 1 fraudulent voter might be prevented from voting? If so, you have some really wierd values.”

  57. 57.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, over in the House… GovExec: House Republicans want to eliminate Federal Election Assistance Agency:

    A spending bill from the House Appropriations Committee unveiled Thursday would give the Election Assistance Commission 60 days to terminate itself. The small agency was created after the tightly contested 2000 presidential election. It has an annual budget of about $10 million and had just 31 employees on its rolls as of March. The agency writes election management guidelines and develops specifications for testing and certifying voting systems, among other tasks.

    The House Administration Committee first proposed the elimination earlier this year before the fiscal 2018 appropriations bill also slated the agency to shutter its doors. Republicans argued during a markup Thursday the agency was always intended to be temporary and other federal offices, such as the Federal Elections Commission, could easily assume its responsibilities.

    Democrats introduced an amendment at the markup to save the agency, arguing that its role was more important than ever given the attempts by the Russian government to interfere with the 2016 election. Republicans rejected that line of thinking, noting the Homeland Security Department, and not EAC, has jurisdiction over election-related cybersecurity issues.

    Brenda Bowser Soder, an EAC spokeswoman, said the agency has been “active in the conversation around cybersecurity for a long time.” EAC, she explained, provides cybersecurity experts with information on election processes. She added the agency helps to increase voting access, boost security and update election equipment.

    […]

    It’s obviously not needed, amirite? Waste, Fraud, and Abuse – plain as day.

    But I guess this means that Kobach’s Commission isn’t needed either, since the FEC and Jared can handle everything as it is. So there’s that.

    What??

    (groucho-roll-eyes.gif)

    (sigh)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  58. 58.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mike in DC: Yep. My take has always been that Farage was one of the go betweens with Assange. A direct one. Stone was another. Farage is also a connection of both Bannon and Mercer. What I’d really like to know is what Stone’s real connections to Russian intel are. He was the one that encouraged and arranged the President’s late 1980s trip to the Soviet Union. He was the one who has been encouraging him to run for president since the late 1980s. I’m not a big fan of coincidence.

  59. 59.

    efgoldman

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    let’s just say that I am not in a position to find the evidence for you.

    It’s proving a negative. That’s the way all the shithead conspiracy theories work.
    Prove to me that the bank on the corner didn’t get robbed!

  62. 62.

    Mnemosyne

    Any Balloon-Juice writers out there who are planning to do Camp NaNoWriMo? If so, send me a Gmail at Mnemosyne dot muse with your NaNo username and I’ll add you to a private cabin. Serious enquiries only! ?

  63. 63.

    Waratah

    @Adam L Silverman: thank you interesting read.
    Reading the Wall Sreet Journal I could not see how it connected to the Trump campaign
    With this post it was made clear that this might be important.

  64. 64.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @efgoldman: I know that, and (at the risk of Cole “joking” again) that wasn’t my point. I will say it again; I have had a bad week; it is Friday. Yes?

  66. 66.

    Mike J

    Plz flip over to Amazon and watch the first 5 minutes of Sound City by Dave Grohl and tell me if every single line of dialog all the way through the opening credits isn’t cliches.

  67. 67.

    randy khan

    @japa21:

    The standard response to that point is that if people aren’t willing to go to the trouble to get an ID, then they shouldn’t be voting. The answer that voting ought to be a right doesn’t seem to penetrate their brains.

    The particular irony of that is that many of the people who are die-hard voter ID supporters are essentially against any other government regulation because it impinges on their freeeeeeeedommmmmmm.

  69. 69.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @randy khan: Some people despite every effort are unable to get a legally acceptable ID. And, at this point, I tend to go into uncontrollable rage…. An hour later, I am working to help folks in WI.

  70. 70.

    Another Scott

    @SiubhanDuinne: I get the same mountains of e-mail, but I still get much more other (non-political) spam.

    Candidates need money to run for office and win. Annoyances come with it, but you’re doing important work in supporting candidates of your choice. Do what you can, and don’t feel guilty that you can’t do more. They don’t expect every begging e-mail to be successful.

    Oh, and as soon as you give again, you’ll get bombarded again. Such is life. ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  72. 72.

    J R in WV

    I have a bottle of calvados aka apple brandy, which is better than you might expect.

    Happy July, all!

  73. 73.

    ly-Ballou

    One helluva pitching duel going on in Oakland tonight. The A’s Sonny Gray has given up one run on two hits through 8, but he’s losing because the Braves’ Foltynewicz has a no-hitter going.

  78. 78.

    Viva BrisVegas

    DudeRobe isn’t just a robe, though there is one of those. It’s an entire lineup of towel-lined loungewear—from robes and hoodies to shorts and pants—designed for bros.

    I don’t know if you had the same thing over there, but this sounds exactly like the terry toweling clothing lines we were inflicted with in the 70s.

    Shorts, hats, dresses, shirts, hot pants, you could get it all it in Terry Toweling. Male, female and unisex as I recall. All in fun colours which mostly seemed to be pink and purple.

    I wish the bros well with their vintage reproduction clothing. I expect that they will come in four sizes:

    Stud, dude, cuck and Trump.

  79. 79.

    Suzanne

    UGHHHHHH. Spawn the Elder had a total meltdown tonight when I went to drop her off at my ex-husband’s house. He handled it BADLY, at one point trying to physically remove her from my car.

    He is not the worst parent ever, but he is certainly a fucking douche.

    Trying again tomorrow morning. Blah.

  80. 80.

    J R in WV

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    So if you planned to vote a couple of extra times as dead people from recent obits you find in a local newspaper, first you need to find people that match your general description, and a signature of the dead person you intend to impersonate at a polling place.

    When you park and walk into the polling place, there will be people waiting to vote, and people who just did vote, all chatting a little before they leave. Some of these people may have been neighbors of the dead person you intend to impersonate. You stand in line without talking to “your neighbors” like other folks do, because you aren’t their neighbors, you don’t know what’s going on in the neighborhood.

    As you approach the polling desk, when you get to say your chosen dead person’s name to the poll workers, you don’t know but one of those poll workers was a in-law relative of the deceased person you are impersonating. Or next door neighbor, or used to mow your lawn, or deliver groceries or meals-on-wheels to your dead person you are impersonating.

    A little stress there, maybe? And to make any impact on the total polls for the races you are interested in, you need to do this all day long, right???? VOTE ALLA THE DEAD PEOPLE to make a dent in a big race, right?

    To quote the honorable rickyrah:

    GET THE FUQ OUTTA HERE!!!!

  82. 82.

    Matt

    @randy khan:

    Not to mention the nontrivial overlap between “VOTER ID IZ NEEDED” and “NATIONAL ID IZ TEH MARK OF SATAN” out there.

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