Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Decision time: keep arguing about the last election, or try to win the next one?

Tick tock motherfuckers!

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

All hail the time of the bunny!

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

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

He really is that stupid.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

They spent the last eight months firing professionals and replacing them with ideologues.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

In my day, never was longer.

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Archives for September 2018

Sunday Night Open Thread

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Survived homecoming, although this shit was a lot easier when I was drinking. Had about 50 people both nights, and the parties went well into the morning although I went to bed at midnight to one each night.

I was forced to be in a picture. I did not like it.

My good friend Joelle did turn me on to the most amazing site for Steve, https://www.meowijuana.com/ and brought him an awesome catnip blunt, which I will give to him when he decides to come back in from under the deck and finishes shitting in my slippers.

At any rate, Go Steelers.

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Please, please tell me now

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We hit our goal in the Forty House Seats To Freedom. I’ll raise 20K for the next 20 candidates anyone wants to name in the comments. I’ll re-up this tomorrow to give everyone a chance to name candidates.

By the way, we’re on track to raise 250K this cycle. That’s two-and-a-half times the max we’ve ever done in a cycle before and that previous max was a presidential year, not a midterm. I’m blown away by how much you guys are giving. Thanks!

Here’s who we had for the first forty — I’ll take ANY Dem candidate who wasn’t on this initial list.

Cindy Axne (IA-03)
Andrew Janz (CA-22)
Paul Davis (KS-02)
Antonio Delgado (NY-19)
Katie Hill (CA-25)
Angie Craig (MN-02)
Abigail Spanberger (VA-07)
Jessica Morse (CA-04)
Colin Allred (TX-32)
Mike Levin (CA-49)
Mikie Sherrill (NJ-11)
Katie Porter (CA-45)
Gil Cisneros (CA-39)
Dean Phillips (MN-03)
Vangie Williams (VA-01)
Elissa Slotkin (MI-08)
Haley Stevens (MI-11)
Harley Rouda (CA-48)
Kim Schrier (WA-08)
Aftab Pureval (OH-01)
Abby Finkenauer (IA-01)
Andy Kim (NJ-03)
Brendan Kelly (IL-12)
Conor Lamb (PA-17)
Jason Crow (CO-06)
Dan McCready (NC-09)
Sean Casten (IL-06)
Xochitl Torres Small (NM-02)
Cathy Albro (MI-03)
Lizzie Fletcher (TX-07)
Sharice Davids (KS-03)
Jennifer Wexton (VA-10)
Tom Malinowski (NJ-07)
Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ-02)
Jared Golden (ME-02)
Susan Wild (PA-07)
Elaine Luria (VA-02)
Josh Harder (CA-10)
Anthony Brindisi (NY-22)
Amy McGrath (KY-06)

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Sunday Evening Open Thread: Strange, Strange Days

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Lord Smallgloves threw himself another campaign rally in West WTF Virginia last night, and the indefatigable Daniel Dale was there to live-tweet…


I’m beginning to sense a theme for the evening…

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I Am Very Worried About This

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Children are being awakened in the middle of the night so that they can be moved with minimum public notice to a concentration camp near Tornillo, Texas. They have no school and minimal access to legal aid. Although this latest article has no overall numbers, what I have seen is in the range of 13,000, spread across who knows how many “shelters.”

It’s pretty clear that the administration has no plans for dealing with these children, only an intention to make people who try to cross the border miserable. Accommodations have been ad hoc from the start.

What happens as more children are collected and those in custody stay there? This is a large number of people to take care of. They are emotionally traumatized. They are not receiving schooling. There will be sexual and other assaults.

What happens as there is no provision to get them back to family? What happens as the numbers grow?

There are two relatively recent historical answers to the questions. During World War II, between 110,000 and 120,000 Japanese were extracted from their homes and made to live in camps in the interior of the country. Most of them made it back to something like normal lives, although many lost most of their property. The children were interned with their families.

The other historical example does not end even that well.

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Authors In Our Midst and Writers Chatting

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In our continuing series featuring Balloon-Juice author’s latest books. Dorothy Winsor has a new book out this week. I’ll let her take it from here.

Stuck in a city far from home, street kid Doniver fakes telling fortunes so he can earn a few coins to feed himself and his friends. Then the divine Powers smile on him when he accidentally delivers a true prediction for the prince.

Concerned about rumors of treason, the prince demands that Doniver use his “magic” to prevent harm from coming to the king, and so Doniver is taken–dragged?–into the castle to be the royal fortune teller.

Now Doniver must decide where the boundaries of honor lie, as he struggles to work convincing magic, fend off whoever is trying to shut him up, and stop an assassin, assuming he can even figure out who the would-be assassin is. All he wants is to survive long enough to go home to the Uplands, but it’s starting to look as if that might be too much to ask.

Here’s the tl:dr version: Street kid Doniver accidentally tells a true fortune for the prince and is taken into the castle to be the royal fortune teller. Good new? Food and a warm bed. Bad news? He can’t tell fortunes.

I’ve said on BJ before that I got the idea for this book from the old TV show “Psych.” If you recall, that’s about a fake psychic who gets involved in solving crimes. Because I write fantasy, it occurred to me I could twist that into a fake magician responsible for stopping an assassination plot.

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TaMara suggested I include something about my experience writing this book, so I went back and looked at my files and was shocked to see a complete draft from 2008. Yes, that’s right. Ten years ago. I am so slow. Not to generate words, mind you. I can do that. It’s generating insights into my characters, their situations, and whatever I want to say about the human heart that takes me forever. I am super slow about that. Now the parts of the book I like best are the ones I wrote late in the process. That early draft was competent but flat. I hope this one is at least less so!

I’m happy to talk about the book, publishing, and anything else, even Trump. This is BJ after all.

Oh, hell no on Trump. This is a politics-free thread, unless it is what you are writing about.  I thought we’d try a later time since I had a few requests for that. Let me know if it works for you guys.

So let’s chat. What are you writing these days? How’s your process? Any questions for Dorothy? Hit the comments.

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Open Thread: Fall Colors

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Rocky Mountain National Park this week. Colors aren’t at peak yet, we’ll go again in a week or so.

An update on Authors in Our Midst and Writers chatting. I had some requests, so I’ve moved the time to 3 pm EDT/2 pm CDT/12 pm PDT. We have a new release from our own Dorothy Winsor, so even if you’re not a writer, stop by and ask her about it.

I’m heading out to do a final weeding before tucking the gardens in for winter. What’s on your plate today?

Open thread

 

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