Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I was promised a recession.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Fani Willis claps back at Trump chihuahua, Jim Jordan.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

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

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Republicans don’t trust women.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

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

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Every day Vance writes another chapter in the book called “Worst VP Pick Ever”.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

The Supreme Court is corrupt. Democrats must win in November and force court reform.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

I’m just a talker, trying to find a channel!

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

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Please don’t feed the bears.

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Reader Interactions

84Comments

  1. 1.

    Anne Laurie

    Dear BlogLord:

    Yes, some of us had noticed this already. And *mostly* approved!

    P.S. I will FIGHT for ‘Cosplay Socialists’, however. This is a new category which will, unfortunately, get much more use over the next 18 months.

    P.P.S. ‘Nixonland’ and ‘When Everything Changed’ are for specific book-discussion threads, and should be archived but *not* discarded. The Nixonland thread in particularly includes a lot of GREAT material, including a long ask-and-answer thread with the author!

  4. 4.

    cain

    People we need the talk.. we can’t have ads that whisk you away from the website talking about how you won some prize. We aren’t some ghetto site. Can we please get rid of it ?

  5. 5.

    redactor

    This happens to me sometimes with Safari but not with Firefox. The first time I saw it, I thought it was a virus.

  7. 7.

    Jackie

    @cain: I had the same problem – it started about three weeks ago. I downloaded an ad block, and (knock on wood!) haven’t had any problems since.

  17. 17.

    banditqueen

    @cain:

    We aren’t some ghetto site.

    Please rethink how you use the word ‘ghetto’ here–it’s clear that you mean to imply inferiority, inappropriateness, vulgarity, etc. In the US, in these times, using ‘ghetto’ to indicate inferiority just doesn’t work–it’s origin in the US is just so racially coded. Thank you.

  20. 20.

    jl

    I thought Cole gave up on trying to control categories and tags, and admitted that their number would expand endless, kind of like a textual space filling curve, in a continually expanding number of dimensions.
    Cole clings to hopeless illusions, he knows it but only occasionally admits it (what else could explain ‘Pretty please’ from the likes of Cole). But, we all knew that already.

    All I can say, through the tears of my helpless laughter is, ‘good luck, Mr. Cole’.

  21. 21.

    jl

    @banditqueen: The proper term is ‘almost top 10,000 blog’. The accuracy of which has been scientifically validated. IIRC, from the one time Balloon-Juice landed on a ridiculously lame top 10 list,

  23. 23.

    Laura Tabolich

    I know you are all up to your ears with the new site build and I hate to ask, but if someone has time to explain to me how I can find all posts by Schlamazel and his earlier name I would be most grateful. I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it yet but I know I need to try. Will I be able to find it on the new site? Thanks for any help. My email is laurabbey (@ )gmail,com

  24. 24.

    jl

    Oh dear, the sorrow. I can’t figure out how to do ranking inside the US (probably not a freebie from Alexa anymore), but globally, balloon-juice is an almost top 100,000 internet site. From 103,097 90 days ago, to 112,500 now.

    But, let us happily and obliviously, proceed on the optimistic assumption that BJ blog punches above its weight in traffic.

    Edit: OK, now I see the padlocks. Have to sign up to get detailed US traffic stats on Alexa now.

  27. 27.

    jl

    @David Anderson: “Can you change Mayhew on Insurance to Anderson on Insurance”

    Gonna have to dig the corrupt filthy rich oligarch Mayhew out of all the booze and blow, and sober him up enough to give permission. Good luck with that.

  29. 29.

    HinTN

    @cain: I’ve had that on my android device for the last few days. Only on this site. It happened here several months ago and stopped when I complained.

  30. 30.

    Major Major Major Major

    @jl: last time I looked (summer(?) 2016) balloon-juice.com was right around the ten thousandth most popular domain name. It’s up there! Obviously traffic peaks at a politics blog are going to be cyclical though, and that would’ve been a high point.

  34. 34.

    Anne Laurie

    @John Cole: Well, you knew I was a nasty woman when you first gave me the dashboard keys…

    Which was — I contemplated a post on this, but modesty forbade — just about 11 years ago, this week. If you believe FYWP, there have been 58,487 posts on this here blog, and 10,428 of them were mine. I’m not the senior surviving second-in-command here (props, DougJ), but I’ll argue such a tenure entitles me to a few special requests!

  35. 35.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Good grief, John. Do you think you can display that red cape a bit more prominently?

  42. 42.

    jl

    We need the new category, tag, and a special blog theme, ‘Helium Crisis!”.

    Why is there a helium crisis? I have to wonder if mindless retreat of big gummint eviltry has had something to do with it. For example, from article I just read:

    ” The biggest source of helium in the United States, the Federal Helium Reserve, in Amarillo, Texas, is winding down its operations after Congress passed laws in 1996 to take the U.S. government out of the helium business. It’s given the reserve until Sept. 30, 2021, to sell the reserve’s remaining helium stores in a series of auctions. Many researchers worry about where their helium will come from after the reserve, believed to account for as much as 40 percent of the U.S.’s helium supply, closes. ”

    Anyone know why this was done? A fucking ‘series of auctions’? Why? I don’t know of any auction design that can solve efficient intertemporal allocation problems of an exhaustible resource.

    Of course, Trump the crook and fool, is the only person who can save us:

    ” Scientists said they were heartened when the Trump administration included helium in its declaration of critical minerals issued in the spring of 2018. The executive order directed federal agencies to collaborate to safeguard America’s access to helium.

    The administration indicated at the time that a plan of action for helium would be issued as soon as last summer, but nearly a year later, the scientific community is still waiting.”

    Of course they are still waiting. It’s like the Trumpsters’ new immigration proposal: they are too incompetent to get anything even written down on paper. Kushner sat around and for a while and thought deep thoughts, one day he decided to call his stream of half-baked pipe dreams a proposal, and then wandered around BSing about it, and told the GOP flunkies to call the BS sessions a proposal. Probably more went into that mirage and fraud than into solving the helium shortage.

    Links from U.S. NEWS: Not just Party City: Why helium shortages worry scientists and researchers
    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/not-just-party-city-why-helium-shortages-worry-scientists-researchers-n1007151

  52. 52.

    dmsilev

    @jl: The helium reserve sell-off predates Trump. You can thank the “privatization of everything” GOP Congress for that one. As to why the US Government has a helium reserve, well it dates back to the Zeppelin era…

    (Helium supplies, and particularly interruptions/shortages thereof, are a matter of great professional concern for me. There was one crisis a few years back where our plan D for acquiring what we needed was ‘go mug some clowns and steal their balloons’. Thankfully, Plans B and C were sufficient)

  54. 54.

    Adam L Silverman

    @dmsilev: Have you considered just having Ben Shapiro talk and capturing it in a bag. And yes, I realize this requires having Ben Shapiro talk.

  56. 56.

    jl

    @dmsilev: Thanks for info. I understood Trump was not president in 1996, so was wondering what lead Congress (and the administration) to approve such nonsense.

    Glad you didn’t have to go mug clowns for your helium;

    Anyway, BillinGlendaleCA just admitted it’s all his fault. Apparently he was the one who bought it all at the auctions to suck it up when he had his habit. So, mystery solved. Thanks, BillinGlendaleCA!

  57. 57.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @jl:

    Glad you didn’t have to go mug clowns for your helium;

    This statement puzzles me.

  58. 58.

    dmsilev

    @jl: Also, there’s a lot in that article which is just plain wrong. For instance,

    The short supply has caused helium prices to soar in recent years, from $5 per liter a decade ago to $100 a liter today.

    is off by a factor of ten. Liquid helium runs a bit over $10 per liter now (depends on where in the country you are, but that’s a good ballpark number). Gas is less expensive, a 200 cubic foot cylinder of gas is around $100, and 200 cubic feet is rather more than a liter… Standard helium prices have gone up a lot in the last ten years, but ‘a lot’ should be read as ‘doubled’ maybe, not ‘factor of twenty’.

    Also,

    An additional source of helium might also exist in space.

    “There’s potentially helium on the moon,” Elsesser said. “But if you think that helium is expensive now, what do you think that it will cost if you bring it back from the moon?

    The only helium which anyone is even speculating about sourcing from the moon is isotopic helium 3, which currently is made as a byproduct of nuclear weapons production (it’s the decay product of tritium) and is thought to exist in small quantities in the lunar regolith due to buildup of solar wind particles. However, helium-3 isn’t used for any of the applications mentioned in that article. It’s used in neutron detectors, and the need for radiation detectors for port security after 9/11 caused a huge spike in the demand and price of 3He. It’s used in ultra-low temperature cryogenics (below 1 degree absolute), and a couple of abstruse applications. Currently runs about $2k per liter of gas, which is roughly 10x higher than before 9/11.

  59. 59.

    Ohio Mom

    @dmsilev: What would happen if we ran out of helium? It sounds like that could happen. We really are a wasteful, irresponsible species.

  62. 62.

    dmsilev

    @Ohio Mom: First off, we’re not in danger of running out. Helium is constantly being produced inside the earth (radioisotopes such as uranium decay, and helium nuclei are one of the byproducts) and it collects in the same sorts of domes which hold oil and natural gas. The thing is, most oil and gas wells simply vent the helium into the atmosphere; at the current prices it’s not worth their while in most cases to trap, purify, and sell. As prices go up, that will change for more production sites (balanced, one hopes, by reductions in the number of gas wells that we’re using. Yay climate change…).

    Secondly, we’re getting better at reusing the helium that we have. That article focused largely on cryogenic applications, using helium as a refrigerant to cool MRI magnets and other things. In years past, this was done open-loop. Take liquid helium, use it to cool your stuff, let the boiling helium gas escape. Today, more and more systems are closed-loop. They either use liquid helium and a separate compressor/condenser to reliquify the boiled gas or they use a high-pressure-gas compression-expansion system (basically like a kitchen refrigerator, only with helium and with a 10 kW water-cooled compressor instead of a small motor). The technology to do this at a reasonably compact size and reasonable price is fairly new, maybe ten or fifteen years.

    There still are uses, mostly industrial applications such as inert-gas welding and rocketry, where it’s impractical or impossible to recapture the gas that’s used, so we still need production, and those will be impacted by rising prices. As will the clowns, but so be it.

  63. 63.

    Jay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    “In hand to hand combat, Clowns are known for squirting flowers, nose beeps, shoe flops, ass kicking and biting. Clowns are known for carrying the It Virus, for which there is no known cure”

    U.S.M.C. Combat Manual, Sec.11, Paragraph 23, copyright 2018.

  66. 66.

    Ohio Mom

    @dmsilev: Thank you for that very clear explanation.

    I think it would be fine if helium balloons cost more — they are hardly a necessity (well, except for the green ones for meetups).

  75. 75.

    Adam L Silverman

    @dmsilev: He does. I try not to make fun of people’s appearance, but it’s like his body stopped growing and developing when he was about 11. He’s short, very slender, and has a high squeaky voice.

  78. 78.

    TaMara (HFG)

    Honest to dog, if we had to explain the eclectic topics covered in this simple post to a non-member…well, I’m not sure we could. But it is what makes it an awesome place. Mugging clowns for their helium FTW

  79. 79.

    Ken

    @NotMax: @Adam L Silverman: @TaMara (HFG): My first assumption was that they’re transferring the existing tags to the new platform, and anything you create between now and the Great Switcheroo might not make it over.

    Alternately, the new platform only supports 26 tags, one starting with each English letter, and they’re desperately triaging and hoping no one notices the reduction.

  80. 80.

    Laura Too

    @Ohio Mom: Getting by…trying to find the new normal. I miss his wit, his laugh and his sarcasm most. I try to read at least the front page every day and some comments, It gives me such comfort to see all your names-at least I still have that connection. I appreciate your thoughts!

  82. 82.

    Jay

    @Aleta:

    “L.A.P.D. Traffic Stop Advisory #491.

    Be aware that vintage Austin Mini Coopers are often used as Clown Cars. Be advised that when pulling over a vintage Austin Mini Cooper, there may be as many as 23 other suspects in the vehicle aside from the driver.”

    23/7/322 section 19.

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