Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let there be snark.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

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

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

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

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

Good lord, these people are nuts.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

White supremacy is terrorism.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

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

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

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

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

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

You are here: Home / Politics / America / At the quarter post

At the quarter post

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25% done of this era of errors.

The upside of extraordinary pessimism is that surprise is a positive. I am surprised that the core of the ACA ( Medicaid expansion and guarantee issued/community rated subsidized insurance) is still strong. Medicaid expansion may still expand in Maine and via referandum elsewhere.

I am happy at the counter-reaction that is trying to defend our values from reactionaries.

And I look forward to working my ass off to gain a veto point next November.

What say ye….

Reader Interactions

42Comments

  2. 2.

    Tom Levenson

    We shall fight on the tweeches. We shall fight on the books of face. We shall fight in the streets of every damn Congressional district….

  5. 5.

    JMG

    Jeff Greenfield, last relevant in 1975, has a big article in Politico about how the Democrats will lose the midterms because reasons. The real reason of course, is that he knows clickbait gets published.
    BTW, I read Robert Costas’ twitter mention that some House members were complaining about a lack of towels in the House gym this morning. It occurred to me that were a member of the House or Senate, I wouldn’t eat in the House or Senate cafeterias until the shutdown ends. No telling what’s in that omelet prepared by unpaid workers.

  6. 6.

    Thaddeu

    balloon-juice.com does not show up google search results now (for me at least). Though some links to posts and tweets does.

    Google screwing around with its rankings, or someone screwing around with SEO’ing BJ out of the results?

  11. 11.

    p.a.

    NO COMPLACENCY! We must remain shrill. We’re fighting an infantile racist Presnit, his infantile racist base, a treasonous House and Senate majority, a billionaire-owned ( to ?%) federal court system, and a mainstream press that’s in large part a clone of the Fux News/Hate Radio nexus.

  12. 12.

    eclare

    @Aardvark Cheeselog: Perfect! One of my favorite signs was from an airport protest of the first Muslim ban: First they came for the Muslims, and we said not today motherfuckers! Love that attitude.

  13. 13.

    Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)

    I know this isn’t terribly insightful. but it seems to me the Rs are incapable of governing. It’s partly because they lack the skills and knowledge. And it’s partly because they don’t believe in the value of governing. And of course their people score high in free-floating hostility which makes it hard for them to cooperate even with one another. But also, as a group, they’re more like a philosophical society or a religion, interested in right thinking rather than practical activity.

  14. 14.

    Yutsano

    @Mike J: I wish the wave was enough to spike Newhouse but he’s such a milquetoast non-entity that all I can hope for is Didier getting salty again and knocking him out in the jungle.

    There’s a lot of migrant workers here. The farmers want solutions. McMorris-Rodgers isn’t coughing those up because she’s trying for higher ambitions. I would LOVE to see her go down.

  15. 15.

    lowtechcyclist

    @eclare:

    One of my favorite signs was from an airport protest of the first Muslim ban: First they came for the Muslims, and we said not today motherfuckers!

    I’d forgotten that one! Gives me a smile to remember it. Thanks!

  16. 16.

    Emerald

    As for overriding vetoes, that will be impossible in the Senate, at least. There aren’t enough Republicans up for re-election to give us a 2/3 majority even if we won ’em all.

    Or to convict and remove Trump/Pence/Gorsuch if any or all were to be impeached by, say, a newly Democratic House.

    So. Interesting times.

  17. 17.

    Gvg

    I think the optics on TV today are good for our side. Talking heads about gov shutdown and how Congress might reach a deal with background saying anti trump protests breaking out across the country. 3 split Windows showing pink hat crowds Chicago, Denver and New York…..people home for weekend watching that. I know it wasn’t planned for both at the same time but it to me makes a point.

  18. 18.

    Gvg

    @Emerald: how bout if a few more were removed for bribes, money laundering, and other crimes and there were special elections? Given the way they have been behaving and the inevitable results of Citizens United I think that is possible and even likely.
    We need to aim for Govenors and Attorney Generals too this election. A lot of states have those elections in mid term to avoid too much imput from the rabble.
    A big deal is the census for apportioning seats in future elections. Our future prospects long term need fair census.

  19. 19.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Gvg: I was just clicking around. The New York march looks huge, at least fifty thousand in Chicago, I haven’t seen numbers for DC, but it’s got to be driving The Rough Beast nuts. He can’t go to his big party, Davos has got to be iffy, and all the TeeVees– Teacher, Mother, Secret Lover– are showing him people who hate him

    Kyle Hester makes movies.‏ @ KyleDHester
    #WomensMarch2018
    This is New York.
    Amazing.

    (edited to remove random apostrophe though it increasingly feels like that’s a fight I’ve lost even in my own head)

  20. 20.

    MomSense

    We just wrapped up our women’s march in Augusta. The executive director of Emily’s List was one of our speakers. As if this morning, over 26,000 pro-choice women have told Emily’s List they want to run for office! The future is female!

  22. 22.

    opiejeanne

    @Mike J: Cathy McMorris Rogers definitely needs to go. I noticed her when she pulled that stunt with the people she dug up to testify about the ACA, blah blah blah.

  23. 23.

    joel hanes

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):

    the Rs are… more … interested in right thinking rather than practical activity

    Close.

    They’re most interested in the appearance of right thinking, in public poses and postures.
    In their prayers, it’s not the conversation with God nor the self-reflection that’s important — what’s important is to be seen as more prayerful and more “Christian” [-ist] than some despised Other.
    Jesus had their number, and calls them out in Matthew 6, and again at Matthew 23:5

    They don’t really have any interest in thinking, per se, nor in actual ideas — they never challenge their own assumptions, but instead rationalize and choose axioms to support positions they already have, and to valorize people Like Them.

  26. 26.

    JMG

    @opiejeanne: Ordinarily, National Park Service would provide a crowd estimate, but they’re off today for some reason. DC police might give crowd guesstimate.

  29. 29.

    joel hanes

    Ima blogwhore a little.

    Lance Mannion, today :

    Four of the last six Republican presidents either ran their administrations as criminal enterprises or harbored and nurtured criminal enterprises within them. Nixon, Reagan, George W. Bush, and now Donald Trump.

    You could argue it’s five. I left George Herbert Walker off the list because I’m still not sure his one term shouldn’t be counted as Reagan’s third term and don’t know how to judge whether or not the Iran-Contra conspiracy was continued by him. That he eventually pardoned everybody who needed pardoning is pretty damning.

    But whether it’s four or five, it’s pretty damning of the Republican Party. It’s indicative of Republicans’ attitudes towards the law, governing, and democracy itself.

    The law doesn’t apply to them, only to others who get in their way. They can do whatever they want, run things any way they see fit. The country belongs to them and the only people’s voices they have to listen to are those who say Yes, sir! to whatever they’re told.

    They can lie, stonewall, cover it up. They can get the money even though it would be wrong. They can trade arms for hostages with the enemy, arm and train death squads who will rape and murder nuns, and connive to start and fund wars even when there are laws that explicitly tell them they can’t do it. They can lie us into wars of plunder and conquest and turn us into a nation of torturers. And they can foist upon us a presidency dedicated to enriching the president, his family, his senior aides and advisors, and anybody connected to them who has their eye out for the main chance.

    They’ve done this literally, run the government as criminal enterprises, on large and small scales, at all levels of government, from town to state to federal.

    They do it because they can. They do it because they think they have the right. They do it because they’ve convinced themselves it is right.

    They do it, because if a Republican does it, it’s not wrong.

    Here

    Lance could use some help just now; if you feel like kicking in a nickel to help out someone who writes like that, I’m sure it would be appreciated.

  32. 32.

    Uncle Omar

    I know Don is upset that he can’t go to Florida and get his tongue bath, but couldn’t he just fly on his 707 rather than burning taxpayer jet fuel, which could be going to the military who need it and deserve it, and causing wear and tear on AF 1? Will the Secret Service guys be going unpaid during the Trump Shutdown?

  34. 34.

    catclub

    @Gvg:

    how bout if a few more were removed for bribes, money laundering, and other crimes and there were special elections? Given the way they have been behaving and the inevitable results of Citizens United I think that is possible and even likely.

    What are you smoking? That is the good stuff.

    A big deal is the census for apportioning seats in future elections.

    That can now happen anytime you get a working majority in your local state government. Every ten years is just the minimum.

  39. 39.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    Sorry I posted in two threads that disappeared but Shitgibbon is posting how it is a good weather day for a woman’s march to celebrate the wonderful things the Trump presidency has done and Nancy Pelosi posted right after “who is going to tell him” best tweet of the day.

  40. 40.

    WaterGirl

    @Sloane Ranger: Most likely it’s related to Cole have letting his domain lapse. It was just for a few hours, but I wonder if BJ is being seen as some newbie on the internet, rather than a top 10k blog.

  41. 41.

    rikyrah

    I was on the fence about the Dems holding out because of DACA. Chris Hayes did a tweet saying that the GOP wants to deport all the Dreamers, but won’t come out and admit it. I realize that he is.absolutely correct. And, those stories that we post, here and there.. doing it to DACA would put it Front and Center for many Americans who don’t read those stores like we do. They want the Dems to do the dirty work for them. To that I SAY HELL NO ?
    We will not abandon these young people.

    There are certain things that need to define us as Democrats. Fighting for these young people is worth it. I see them as the future of America.

    No, we will NOT go along with Making America WHITE Again.
    They must be forced to OWN THAT.

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