Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Consistently wrong since 2002

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

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

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

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

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

I really should read my own blog.

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

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

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

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

“woke” is the new caravan.

This fight is for everything.

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

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Hill And Holmes Testimony After The Break

Reader Interactions

83Comments

  4. 4.

    TaMara (HFG)

    This needs to play on a loop:

     

  8. 8.

    lollipopguild

    Chickens are finally coming home to roost!  “Gentlemen, we must do something to save our phoney-baloney jobs!”

  10. 10.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Patricia Kayden: Pelosi’s words to the media’s heart, hopefully.

    Instead, I imagine they’re going to use the “Republicans all say this is awful so therefore it’s a both sides issue and who can say if Trump actually did these things we have multiple witnesses and documentation for?”

  11. 11.

    PST

    Just to get back to casting the movie, has anyone suggested yet that Bob Balaban would make a fine Gordon Sonderland? Among other things, he too has a fine resting smile face.

  13. 13.

    p.a.

    @Patricia Kayden: Media: no… no.  Stenography is our only duty.  (Apology to stenographers for equating them to national media.)

     

    The question has always been framed: when does the national Rethug party turn on drumpf?  Maybe more pertinent question: when does Rupert Murdoch turn on drumpf?  (Of course, WILL THEY EVER is also a legit question.)

  15. 15.

    NotMax

    @PST

    Thought he looked like the late Dick Van Patten.

    While on the subject, who in anything close to his position proudly repeats over and over “I don’t take notes!”

  17. 17.

    trollhattan

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Ooh, have we been good enough to earn a two-fer–Donny and Bibi both headed to prison?

     

    Then Bibi can be sent to the Hague for a war crimes tribunal.

     

    Are others having their nyms disappear overnight?

  21. 21.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @PST: For Counsel Goldman, I see Aaron Staton, who played Ken Cosgrove on Mad Men and currently has a role on Castle Rock.

  24. 24.

    Adam L Silverman

    @trollhattan:

    Are others having their nyms disappear overnight? 

    Welcome to the new Balloon Juice extraordinary rendition program. We have prepared a VIP accommodation for you. Your personalized enhanced interrogation program begins promptly at 8 AM every day. Trust us, you don’t want to be late for any session!//

  27. 27.

    Betty Cracker

    Did anyone catch Holmes’ subtle shade at Trump when he was described the Sondland call? He said Sondland said he was calling from Kyiv, and Trump asked if he was in Ukraine. LOL!

  28. 28.

    dexwood

    @trollhattan: Yes, on my desktop, my nym and email are missing every morning. Windows 7 Pro, Firefox. On my android phone, my nym sticks, but my email must be added daily.

  33. 33.

    JAFD

    Good afternoon, gentlefolk and Jackals !

     

    It’s a beautiful November day here in New Jersey, sunshine and 52F.  I’m going to head outside, walk a mile, get some groceries.  Trust youse will keep me posted if anything relevant happens in DC or Kyiv or anywhere in between.

    And in case I don’t write what you read in this next week, wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving !  Hoping you have things to be grateful for, this year – even if not as much as I have ;-)

    Be well, and take care of yourselves.

  35. 35.

    japa21

    So apparently Trump is going to stop the Navy from removing the Navy Seal he restored rank to last week.  He tweeted

    More
    The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident Pin. This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business!

    5:30 AM – 21 Nov 2019

  39. 39.

    Kent

    @Patricia Kayden: Any Dem-leaning federal judge who retires between now and 2020 needs to be shunned from polite society for fucking life.  Suck it up and put that damn retirement off for one more year for the sake of the future of the country.

  44. 44.

    Joey Maloney

    I am very very eager to watch Nunes stumblefuck into the buzzsaw that Fiona Hill will be if he tries any of his bullshit on her.

  45. 45.

    Jeffro

    I sure hope the Dems are planning on running ads this coming year about all the bills they’ve passed in the House that are stalled out due to The Turtle’s inaction.  It makes me furious that he does nothing but confirm unfit judges and I think a massive majority of Americans will feel that way too – IF the Dems constantly remind them of that.

     

    On second thought, I don’t want GOP voters reminded that the trumpov-Turtle Axis of Evil is confirming RWNJ judges right and left.  Leave that part out, Dems!  Just show the massive snowdrift of bills piling up at his door.

  46. 46.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Patricia Kayden: I can’t help wondering how Trump will react. What is happening to Bibi is very similar to what is happening to Trump as are the charges.

     

    I would think Trump will currently be feeling bowels opening fear and will shortly be charging through the Twitter China shop like a bull on steroids.

  47. 47.

    Yarrow

    @JPL:

    David Holmes needs someone talented also.   The role isn’t as big but still important.

    I keep thinking of Kevin M. Cozner (no, not Costner). He plays Captain Holt’s husband on Brooklyn Nine-Nine and he’s been in a bunch of other stuff too.

  48. 48.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @japa21: They’ll also never give him an another assignment where that trident matters.  The NCOIC of a laundromat at a navy fuel depot in the Aleutians with a Budweiser badge?  Obviously a major fuck-up of some kind.  Then his new colleagues will hit google if they don’t already know.

     

    TL,DR:  He is a pariah, badge or no badge.

  53. 53.

    Ella in New Mexico

    I’ve been switching back and forth between FOX news and the other news outlets during these hearings because I really want to know what the Hell the MAGA brigade hears from it’s Pravda that is so able to keep them from disbelieving their own eyes and ears.

     

    Bill Hemmer repeating exact same fricking “In 2016 Ukraine Worked with Democrats v Trump Oh And Burisma/Hunter Biden Too” conspiracy theory Hill just said was a Russian lie as if it’s a known, legitimate rationale for Trump bribing Ukraine is helping me understand why they’re the most uninformed people in America.

  55. 55.

    Kent

    @Jeffro: I’m not any kind of political consultant, but the 2020 ads I would run would be some sort of split screen compare and contrast ad with a Trump cabinet official on one side showing what they got from Trump compared to an ordinary person.

     

    So, Sec. of Educaton DeVos got a $25 million tax break from Trump and pays no taxes on her 8 yachts (or whatever) compared a working single mom with two jobs who has seen her health insurance premiums double under Trump due to his endless efforts to undermine the Affordable Care Act and who has seen her salary stall because of his lack of support for living wages.

     

    That sort of thing.  The uber-rich make out like bandits under Trump while the working folk suffer.  Repeat again and again and again with a different Trump lackey each time.

  56. 56.

    Amir Khalid

    @japa21:

    I have no doubt that Trump is Commander in Chief and gets to do such things. But he has been flouting the rules* about exerting undue command influence with a vengeance. I have to wonder about what that does to the relationship between the US military and the civilian leadership it reports to. (Not that I’m expecting mutiny or a coup, far from it; but this has to be causing some damage.)

     

    *Or is it more appropriate to say breaking the law?

  58. 58.

    Martin

    I  think a lot of people continue to underestimate how career professionals work. I’ll hope that Adam backs me up here.

     

    When you work in a two-class system like government where you have the political class and the career class, it’s almost always the case that the political class thinks they can get what they want by blustering, while the career class are the ones that learn how to bend with the wind. You learn how to get the infrastructure job of governing, the paper moving, the dollar moving, by figuring out what the motives of the political players are, and then adapting your approach to thread the needle around the political actors that stand in your way. In order to be a career professional at this level and not blow yourself up, you need to be way better at practical bureaucratic politics than the political guys.

     

    So if I’m Fiona Hill, I have a story I want people to internalize. It’s the true story of whats happening in government. But people have internalized some parts of that story, and not others. The political actors (Nunes, etc) are trying to knock certain parts of that story down so that the public doesn’t internalize it. Hill would be watching these hearings, figuring out what parts of the story don’t need to be told because they are accepted, and how the political actors are attacking the story she wants to tell.

     

    Schiff doesn’t need to steer the witnesses in any particular way, the pros already know how to do that because they want this story to come out and with each passing day, they know a bit better how to shape their testimony. The way this government is being run makes them sick.  It makes them question their careers. More than anything they want this fixed. In most of these cases they want that more than they want to keep their job. So long as Schiff keeps giving them airtime, and keeps finding people like Vindman and Yovanovitch in government, the witnesses will do a lot of the heavy lifting.

  60. 60.

    patroclus

    Fiona Hill strikes me as a Hunter-Seeker.  Giuliani is Baron Harkonnen.  Dan Goldman knows the ways of cross-examination as if he was born to it.  Sadly, Joe Biden seems to be a Leto Atreides.  Trump is the Emperor.   Is this Dune day in the Impeachment hearings?

  70. 70.

    NotMax

    @CCL

    “Sir, if you are impeached and convicted, not only will you be the first but it is guaranteed your name will have a prominent spot in the history books for all time!”

  71. 71.

    Kent

    @Martin:

    I  think a lot of people continue to underestimate how career professionals work. I’ll hope that Adam backs me up here.

     

    When you work in a two-class system like government where you have the political class and the career class, it’s almost always the case that the political class thinks they can get what they want by blustering, while the career class are the ones that learn how to bend with the wind. You learn how to get the infrastructure job of governing, the paper moving, the dollar moving, by figuring out what the motives of the political players are, and then adapting your approach to thread the needle around the political actors that stand in your way. In order to be a career professional at this level and not blow yourself up, you need to be way better at practical bureaucratic politics than the political guys.

     

    Also I don’t think many realize how thin the political class is.  I spent about 15 years working for the National Marine Fisheries Service (now called NOAA Fisheries).  The agency has a large headquarters in Silver Spring MD and dozens of regional offices and laboratories scattered all around the nations coastlines from Woods Hole to Honolulu with thousands of employees.  When I was there I think there were only two political appointees in the entire agency.  The head of NMFS was a political appointee and sometime in the Bush Administration they created a second political appointee position of Ombudsman which was sort of a fixer-guy who would travel around and dive into local conflicts like the turtle excluder devices in the Gulf or sea lions on the west coast.

     

    Everyone else in the entire agency was a career civil service emplyee, and most of them, at least in the higher levels were either scientists or attorneys who all worked through many different administrations, Republican or Democrat.

  72. 72.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Amir Khalid: I would say no.  But an number of things with this have confused me.  Differences between army and nave traditions, perhaps.  In the army, if you have earned a skill badge you are entitled to wear it, so the talk of taking away his trident is odd.

  74. 74.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Yarrow: As a side note, Kevin Cosner is fucking fantastic in Brooklyn 99, but also in The Good Place. Talking about what he does in TGP is kind a spoiler, but it contrasts so well with his character in Brooklyn 99 that it’s hilarious just by itself.

    He’d be a great David Holmes.

  76. 76.

    Kent

    @NotMax: For sure.   Although in point of fact, they are installed in the front of shrimp trawl nets to provide a way for sea turtles to escape getting caught in fishing nets and drowning.   I’d rather see McConnell just get caught in the shrimp net and drown.

  78. 78.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Martin: I will back you up. I’ve thought about writing a post about how it feels. I’ve been part of this, working for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and I’ve known a number of State Department people. But too many things happening to have time to write it.

  79. 79.

    BroD

    Gotta think that a number of Republicans are ready for John Bolton to come in and euthanize the Trump presidency.

  80. 80.

    Miss Bianca

    @Ella in New Mexico: What I can’t figure out is HOW the Goon Squad manages to square the circle of believing that HRC, the mastermind criminal of their fever dreams, actually engineered a conspiracy designed to help her LOSE the office she was running for!

     

    Then again, it’s not like logical consistency is a key ingredient to understanding the modern conservative mindset. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  81. 81.

    My Side of Town

    Jim Jacketoff just confirms he is nothing more than a Jackoff. Is he Moe, Curly or Larry?

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