Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

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

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

Republicans in disarray!

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

T R E 4 5 O N

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

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

This blog will pay for itself.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

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

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

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

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

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

Reader Interactions

130Comments

  1. 1.

    EBT

    When I lived in Union City, Alameda county used goats to clear brush from Garen region park.

  3. 3.

    dlwchico

    Shub-Niggurath, “The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young”. Her time has come.

  4. 4.

    debit

    Are we talking about the Manafort trial anywhere? And did anyone explain how this:

    During a break, Paul Manafort’s lead attorney Kevin Downing offered a bit of Manafort’s defense on charges of failure to report foreign banks accounts. Essentially, he argued that if Manafort had known he was doing something illegal, he wouldn’t have been so easy to catch.

    “Nobody intending to violate the law would leave the evidence around for his accountant to find it,” Downing said in court.

    Judge T.S. Ellis III made the same point, summarizing the defense as, “There’s a trail in these documents that would lead to the truth, and somebody who violated the law wouldn’t have done that.”

    doesn’t influence the jury? “Well, the judge obviously thinks he’s just an idiot. An innocent idiot.”

    Or am I reading this wrong?

  5. 5.

    Tom Levenson

    I’ve seen w. my own eyes goats being used to reduce fire load in the Berkeley/Oakland hills.

  9. 9.

    jl

    And Lady Cracker highlighted Boise in the previous post. And I suggested to Cole in post previous to that pet- and gardepix are the cure for his discouraged ills today. And now we have this?

    Coincidence? Or not? I’ll go check if QAnon predicted it. On the other hand, this is a full service blog, which could also explain it.

    Thanks for goats-in-the-gardenpix, Cole! Now BJ Blog is pre-eminent in that internet space as well.

  11. 11.

    lollipopguild

    @debit: Manafort knew exactly what he was doing, he had never been in trouble before and he assumed he would get away with it forever. The funny thing is that if he had not of joined up with trump he would still be getting away with it.

  14. 14.

    Immanentize

    @Elizabelle: So do I! I just said that to my son, when I showed him this post.

    Full disclosure — I love cabrito too. There are only so many billy goats needed….

  15. 15.

    jl

    @EBT: Good point. Could be a rental goat herd lawn mower weed eater that got loose. They are become more popular. They are all over SF Bay Area.

  16. 16.

    TenguPhule

    @debit:

    he argued that if Manafort had known he was doing something illegal, he wouldn’t have been so easy to catch.

    “My client is too stupid to be a criminal” may be one of the worst lawyer defenses of all time.

    What say you, BJ lawyers?

  19. 19.

    jl

    @Mnemosyne: BJ does strive to be a full service blog. Despite our constant complaints, we should remember that the front posters try their best to make it happen.

  20. 20.

    TenguPhule

    @Baud:

    “The overwhelming evidence of my guilt proves I’m innocent.”

    “Therefore Hillary must be the most guilty of all because we never found a thing!” //

  22. 22.

    LAO

    @Baud: I’m laughing about this — no criminal mastermind what have left so much evidence so my client can’t be a criminal. Of course alternatively, it could also mean, that the defendant is no mastermind, lol!

  23. 23.

    Immanentize

    @debit: Not innocent. But maybe an idiot. Every year I remind my students that the prisons are not filled with Hannibal Lecter, they are filled with idiots. Some drug and/or alcohol involved, some just idiots. The wattage of the minds in prison is low.

    Look, Manafort was living abroad, probably did not imagine a full on return to the US and didn’t imagine his turn with Trump would be scrutinized because Trump was going to loose, Manafort would get paid, and that’s that. His tax haven hiding was a small thing in the scheme of his career.

  25. 25.

    Mnemosyne

    @Tom Levenson:

    IIRC, goats are used for yardwork because they’ll only eat the plants down to a certain level and then move on. Sheep will graze until the grass is completely gone if you don’t keep them moving.

  26. 26.

    jl

    @debit: Informed law people say that the judge is a caustic asshole with everyone. I don’t think clear from the excerpt whether the Judge was supporting the defense’s absurd argument or subtly ridiculing it. Do you have a link to that so we can read more and get context?

  28. 28.

    Immanentize

    @Baud: That is a great summary. “Too stupid to do what he obviously did with criminal intent” is not a good defense for a guy who was asking for millions for his brainiac services.

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    I think this might be useful:

  33. 33.

    Immanentize

    @debit: I think the judge is just summarizing the defense position. That is actually helpful to the prosecution (or it can be). They are already making sure that their witnesses describe how detail oriented and hands-on Manafort was .

  35. 35.

    Mnemosyne

    @debit:

    To the lawyers’ point, it sounds like the judge was making sure he understood what the defense was claiming, not that he agreed with it. IANAL, but I can’t imagine any judge on earth going along with that claim.

  39. 39.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    We have a small Basque community in So Cal who came here as shepherds. They’re mostly out by Riverside where there’s decent grazing land for sheep and goats.

  40. 40.

    Immanentize

    @Mnemosyne: Mnem, Did you write the great Balloon Juice poem (Come for the ____, stay for the ____?) If so, could you please reprise? Thank you in advance.

  41. 41.

    JPL

    Even in the south, they use goats to keep the weeds low. Not far from me, they have a goat farm where you can take yoga classes.

  43. 43.

    stibbert

    IIRC there was a James Heriott story where the goat ate the longjohns from the laundry line, but the elastic waistband got caught around its tongue – veterinary intervention saved the day.

  44. 44.

    debit

    @Immanentize: Okay. Again, thanks. I have been incredibly apprehensive about this trial. Everyone has been talking about how it’s a slam dunk, that the paper trail is going to convict him, and then the judge keeps excluding things and telling the prosecution to hurry it up, and then this. I am fighting the tendency to Chicken LIttle about every single thing.

  45. 45.

    jl

    @debit: Thanks. I think reporting has shown that the judge is a very loyal GOPer who is temperamentally disgusted by having to run this trial. But as I noted, also evidence the guy is a caustic asshole with everyone. I don’t think enough in the article to tell whether he is interfering in a biased way or just being himself.

  46. 46.

    Mnemosyne

    @Immanentize:

    It wasn’t me. I think it was our resident poet laureate, Subaru Diane.

    I’ll take a stab at one, though:

    Balloon-Juice: come for the politics, stay for the goat rodeo!

  48. 48.

    TenguPhule

    @debit:

    and then the judge keeps excluding things and telling the prosecution to hurry it up

    Word is the judge is an asshole by reputation. On the plus side, Manafort managed to piss them off too.

  50. 50.

    jl

    @Yutsano: Last I heard, Kaus was fired from Daily Caller for having a few too many atoms of honesty and professional scruples left in his body. Maybe he’s gone into the goat herd lawnmower business?

  52. 52.

    guachi

    Cook Political Reports is, like their weather predicting colleagues, slow to make adjustments to trends. However, today they moved the Texas Senate race from Likely Republican to Lean Republican.

    Looking at House predictions, rating a race as ‘Likely’ means about a 0.5% chance of the other side winning (I tracked one time of about 200 races). It’s basically a race that has the potential to be interesting but isn’t now. So if a race is still ‘Likely’ on election day then the time to ‘become interesting’ has run out. Conversely, a ‘Lean’ race has about a 9% chance for the other side to win and that increases to about 15% if you believe in the idea of a wave. I do.

    So a positive sign for Democrats.

  57. 57.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jeffreyw: @Mnemosyne: This is one of the things that ownership, and the politicians that kow tow to them, have forgotten about why ownership agreed to unionization several generations ago: to prevent wildcat strikes and walk offs, as well as more damaging labor actions. The acceptance of unions and unionization was, essentially, a grudging truce after decades of violence and disruption on both sides. The teacher strikes we saw earlier this year are great examples of what happens when people forget history.

  58. 58.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: We have a decent sized community in Florida. A lot of them were professional jai alai players. I went to high school with a couple of the kids.

  61. 61.

    TenguPhule

    The Chinese government threatened Friday to dramatically escalate its economic standoff with Trump, vowing to impose tariffs on $60 billion in U.S. goods if the White House does not halt pending penalties on Chinese imports.

    In a statement, the Chinese Commerce Ministry said China could add duties of 5, 10, 20 or 25 percent on 5,207 types of U.S. imports. It also warned that it could adopt further countermeasures at any time.

    Saying it was “forced to act,” Beijing cast the move as a response to Trump’s threat on Wednesday to raise a proposed tariff rate on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent.

    White House officials had hoped Trump’s latest threat would spook Chinese officials into negotiations, but Beijing instead appears to be digging in with more retaliatory measures that experts believe could hurt the economies of both countries.

    I am shocked, simply shocked, to discover that crude threats against another large country result in retaliation. //

  64. 64.

    TenguPhule

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The acceptance of unions and unionization was, essentially, a grudging truce after decades of violence and disruption on both sides.

    Everything old is new again.

  65. 65.

    Immanentize

    @debit: It is not a slam dunk trial, because it is complex money laundering. But the defense is abut as bad a trial defense as I have seen BECAUSE the only way to pull this off is to have the client (Manafort) testify to how he was in fact duped by the greedy minions AND add to it evidence about how he has already been punished enough. I called this the “I did it and I’m really sorry” defense. I sat second chair in a rape case where the defendant took the stand and said he thought his friend had invited him to have sex with his wife during this drunk fest poker game. And that she had agreed before she passed out. It was all around ugly, I know. But the guy had lost everything while he was in jail waiting for trial — his job, his wife and kid, his house…. And he came across as a really sincere dummy. Jury acquitted on the rape in a very short deliberation (I’ll add he was a good witness for his stupidity and the complaining witness was a hot mess on the stand).

    But Manafort doesn’t have that dummy vibe at all. I am thinking conviction or hung jury? And if it is just one holdout juror, you can bet they will be investigated….

  67. 67.

    rikyrah

    HOLLERING!!!

    White Woman Snatches Protest Sign From Black Woman, Cries to Police When She Gets Punched in the Face

    Michael Harriot
    Yesterday 11:00am

    A white woman found herself participating in the time-honored ritual known as the “catching of hands” when she decided to boldly go where few Beckysapiens have dared to go before by publicly disrespecting an angry black woman.

    It all began when a white woman, who closely resembles a gallon jug of whole milk, decided to wander into a Black Lives Matter demonstration as crowds gathered to protest the shooting of Thurman Blevins, a black man who was shot and killed while running away from police.

    The white woman tried to walk through the protesters because … well, that’s kinda what white people do. Genetic biologists have theorized that melanin deficiency also comes with a lack of the “step aside” gene common in most other human beings. But the Amber-American likely had no idea that this particular crowd was composed of people who had an abundance of the “not today” gene.

    So when the Dusty Rhodes-looking woman decided to snatch the sign of a random black woman protester, the obviously community-minded black woman decided to take the opportunity and address hunger in the white community by promptly delivering a two-piece fist sandwich directly to Sally Sign-Snatcher’s mouth.

  68. 68.

    Immanentize

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The acceptance of unions and unionization was, essentially, a grudging truce after decades of violence and disruption on both sides.

    Just repeating because it is SO true. We may have to relive that little bit of history too (add worker sit downs like the Ford Flynt plant one and others which really led to the NLRB legislation).

  69. 69.

    Marcopolo

    From the Sidney Daily News, Sidney, OH

    Local farmer calls it like he sees it

    Let me be clear. I want to be supportive of the president and his policies. As a farmer, we voted for the president because he purported to represent a “can do, just get it done” attitude. That attitude is the core of farm folks. But the president’s trade war, now being supported by hush money to keep agriculture sedated, is a bridge too far for me. This week the president announced he is offering $12 billion of borrowed taxpayer monies to continue to “have farmer’s backs.” These dollars are nothing more than verification that the president’s protectionist’s trade policies are folly.

    Let me tell you a riddle. “I slept with a billionaire because he said he loved me. I expected to make love, but in the morning I realized I was getting screwed. When I went to tell the world, I was offered cash to keep my mouth shut.” Who am I? No, I’m not a model or someone named Stormy. I’m the American farmer.

    Sidney is a little north of Akron and well west of OH-12 but if this author’s POV is slowly sinking in in farm country that be one more reason that might help explain why OH-12 is a toss-up.

  72. 72.

    Immanentize

    Every goat thread is an open thread — I’m having solar installed today! Woot!

  74. 74.

    TenguPhule

    @Marcopolo:

    trade war, now being supported by hush money to keep agriculture sedated, is a bridge too far for me.

    Fuck him. He voted for the face eating.

  75. 75.

    Elizabelle

    I think this is a huge improvement. Moving from Q Anon to goats.

    One of these groups is smarter, looks better in pajamas, and can do something useful with its mouth. One of these groups is a contributor to society.

  78. 78.

    cckids

    @schrodingers_cat:

    My previously sane friend went to Boise Idaho and became a stark raving lunatic, and became an ex-friend.

    My oldest sister moved there with her jackass husband (now EX-husband, thank Christ); ditto, she lost her mind on several political subjects. She’s now woke, working in a union job and a much more pleasant relative. Still uber-Xtian, but the nicer kind – pays attention to the words of Jesus. So I can live with that.

  79. 79.

    sherparick

    @TenguPhule: So unfair of the Chinese, to actually stand up to Trump’s bullying.

    One point to remember, and which is rarely mentioned in the media, is that the Chinese don’t pay these tariff’s, we do. To the extent China will suffer, it will be firms, including Chinese firms, moving production of consumer goods to Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh,and India.

  81. 81.

    Mandalay

    @Marcopolo:

    This week the president announced he is offering $12 billion of borrowed taxpayer monies

    “Borrowed”? Who the fuck will ever pay back that $12 billion?

  85. 85.

    Gin & Tonic

    @rikyrah: Perfect time to re-up the great philosopher Michael G. Tyson: “Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

  90. 90.

    Brachiator

    Mairzy doats and dozy doats
    and liddle lamzy divey,
    A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?

  92. 92.

    Immanentize

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I’m psyched. I probably won’t live here forever, but I will be getting a battery wall too (when they again get on that production) so when I sell, I can say the house is, electricity-wise, 100% self sufficient. And can be run off grid for days.

  93. 93.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Elizabelle:

    Thank you! And I agree about baby goats in pajamas. Never tire of looking at those videos! (I’m also very fond of Mnem’s “Tiny Goats” Ruth and Sonia, and their adventures meeting all the other zoo animals in turn.)

  99. 99.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Brachiator:

    ???

    That sounds queer, and funny to my ear.

    ETA: Actually, it’s a little bit jumbled and jivy, if you want to know the truth.

  102. 102.

    Capri

    @Mnemosyne: Actually, goats are used to clear brush because they eat brush. And they like your prize wisteria and other bushes as much as they like invasive species and poison ivy. That’s the reason you have to fence them in with the “to be cleared” brush and away from the “valuable bushes.”
    Sheep like to graze on pastures and eat very little brush. So a sheep could be used as a lawn mower. If you tried to use a goat as a lawn mower it would eat all the bushes and the tops off of the weeds as they grew to a certain height.

  106. 106.

    A Ghost To Most

    This fucking guy.

    A right-wing artist’s latest “heroic” image of President Donald Trump received some pretty savage reviews from people on social media.

    Jon McNaughton painted a take on George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, except in this version Trump is commanding a boat filled with members of his administration.

    “Trump endeavors to cross the ‘swamp’ of Washington D.C. as he carries the light of truth, hope and prosperity,” McNaughton wrote. “The murky water of the deep state is laced with dangerous vermin, perfectly willing to destroy American prosperity for their personal ideologies and financial gain.”

    Trump’s companions include: Ben Carson, Jeff Sessions, Mike Pence, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Ivanka Trump, John Bolton, Kellyanne Conway and John Kelly.

  107. 107.

    Immanentize

    @SiubhanDuinne: SD, I was asking Mnem before and she fingered you for the deed–
    Did you write that great BJ paean that was in the form of “Come for the ____, stay for the ___”? If so, could you please reprise it here (on your B-Day no less!) Or just point me to where I might find it? Thanks!

  110. 110.

    The Moar You Know

    @A Ghost To Most: I love Jon McNaughton. That guy has been running one of the most successful grifts on the GOP gullible for decades now and none of them even seems to have an inkling that he’s just chucking out chum for the rubes.

  111. 111.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Immanentize:

    Good lord, I had completely forgotten that! And I just wrote it in late April, only a bit over three months ago! Time is weird.

    Anyhow, thanks for asking and here it is:

    Good old Balloon Juice,
    As good as it gets:
    Come for the POLITICS,
    Stay for the PETS.

    Balloon Juice will serve you,
    Whatever your mood:
    Come for the ANIMALS,
    Stay for the FOOD.

    Most of us love Cole’s
    Emotional rants:
    Come for the RECIPES,
    Stay for the PLANTS.

    The kittehs meow,
    And the puppehs do bark.
    Come for the GARDENING,
    Stay for the SNARK.

    We make fun of Huckabee-
    Sanders’s looks:
    Come for the NASTINESS,
    Stay for the BOOKS.

    We’re few of us burdened
    With riches or wealth.
    But come for the WRITERS’ THREADS,
    Stay for the HEALTH.

    I’m by no means a lawyer,
    Don’t know about torts;
    But I came for OBAMACARE,
    Stayed for the SPORTS.

    You may care not for music,
    Nor skull-fucking goats;
    But come for the FOOTBALL,
    And stay for the VOTES.

  113. 113.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @SiubhanDuinne: IIRC that song was very popular in the 40s. My brothers and I -9, 7, and 5-thought it was hysterical. Our older cousins went around singing it a lot. Much of the charm was/is lost when the lwords are de-garbled.

  115. 115.

    HeleninEire

    About a year before I left Queens there was a newspaper story about a cow was running lose on Jamaica Boulevard. Sorry you guys are photo shopping that shit. There are no cows in Queens. Well it turns out that there is a slaughterhouse in the middle of Queens. The whole city said “WHAT?’ Yes there us a slaughterhouse in Jamaica Queens.

    The NYPD caught her. Very sad.

  118. 118.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Ladyraxterinok:

    Same here. We loved those novelty songs — Mairzy Doats, Fee Little Fissies, The Music Goes Round and Round, the Hut-Sut Song — and sang them a lot.

  121. 121.

    J R in WV

    @A Ghost To Most:

    Goats are excellent at removing poison ivy. They seem to love the stuff.

    Now I’m wondering what that does to the milk and milk products? I’ll ask my neighbor goat farmer dairy friends, they make such wonderful French-style goat milk cheeses. And their herd ranges through the forest covered hills, where there’s bound to be some poison ivy.

    Hmmm.

    Can the goat’s digestive systen disassemble the toxic compound in poison ivy?

    Hmmm…

  122. 122.

    Marcopolo

    @Buckeye:Well, as you can see from my original comment that Sydney is way west of OH-12 I meant to write Dayton–dunno how the hell I typed Akron (which is way north of OH-12) instead. Brain to hand dysfunction I guess. But hearty thanks for the correction.

  124. 124.

    Origuy

    @J R in WV: The North Carolina State University Ag Department says drink up. The allergic reaction to members of the Toxicodendron genus is caused by a substance called urushiol, from the Japanese word for the lacquer tree, urushi. The goats’ milk doesn’t contain the substance.
    The sap of the urushi tree is used to make lacquer, but it must be carefully processed to deactivate the toxin. Cheap lacquer products can cause a reaction in very sensitive people. Personally, I don’t react to urushiol at all, but that could change so I’m still careful.
    Goats also eat yellow star thistle, which is a nasty invasive plant here in California. It can kill horses who eat a lot of it, as it contains a neurotoxin that paralyzes parts of their mouth.

  125. 125.

    Lisa

    Is there still an Amazon link for Balloon-Juice? I’ve been using it to support the site but I don’t see it now.

  126. 126.

    Seanly

    I think the goats were being rented by Ada County Highway District – a lot of the fenced-off storm drainage ponds (which never get much use in Boise) are cleared of their ever-present weeds by goats. Drainage ponds have steep slopes & uneven terrain so goats better than mowing.

  127. 127.

    J R in WV

    @Origuy:

    Not real surprised, poison ivy is really common around here, as is goat herds. So if it was a problem, we would probably all know about it. I only react to poison ivy when I get it in pre-existing wounds, as in from cutting brush to build a barbed wire fence through patches of multiflora rose fully involved with poison ivy vines.

    That was a nasty surprise, my first poison ivy event at the age of 30 odd years old. Very odd years, some of them.

  128. 128.

    Seanly

    @cckids:

    Boise is becoming a blue dot. Our local representatives, as well as most of the city government, are Democrats. The Idaho legislature as a whole is very conservative (and over-represented by Mormons in the same way Christians are over-represented in US Congress), so the Democrats can’t accomplish much. Expansion by Micron, pro-refugee policies of the Mormons, and growth of graduate programs at Boise State are leading to an increase in immigrant and non-white people. However, the area is still almost as lily white as Portland OR.
    Having lived in the conservative & racist Central PA and then Columbia SC (conservative & surprisingly not as racist as Central PA), I can at least stomach Western US conservatives more than those in PA & SC. They tend to be a bit more of the leave me alone & I leave you alone sort. I do see some raving nuts like an asshat that had a “F*ck off, we’re full” sticker of Idaho, but I see a lot more of the Blue Girl, Red State stickers.
    It is beautiful out here. Of all the places we’ve lived, it’s the favorite of my wife & me.

  129. 129.

    burnspbesq

    @debit:

    My read is that the judge is going out of his way to be solicitous of the defense, so that there will be no colorable grounds for appeal if (when) Manafort is convicted. I could be wrong. He might actually think the whole thing is bullshit.

  130. 130.

    burnspbesq

    @LAO:

    The evidence on the FBAR charges is so overwhelming after yesterday’s testimony that Manafort’s only hope is a fucked-up jury instruction on what willfulness means.

Comments are closed.