Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This really is a full service blog.

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

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

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

Everybody saw this coming.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

The revolution will be supervised.

You cannot shame the shameless.

T R E 4 5 O N

People are complicated. Love is not.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

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

Usually wrong but never in doubt

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

This blog will pay for itself.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: New Year’s Zooms for Balloon Juice

Open Thread: New Year’s Zooms for Balloon Juice

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This post is in: 

In case you missed Tuesday’s announcement:  Open Thread: New Year’s Zooms for Balloon Juice

We are having two Balloon Juice Zooms this week:

– New Year’s Eve on 12/31/2020 – 7-9 pm (Eastern) – zoom opens for general conversation 30 minutes before

– New Year’s Day on 1/1/2021 – 3:30 – 5:30 pm (Eastern) – zoom opens for general conversation 30 minutes before

Zoom links have been sent if you requested them by email.

If you haven’t already contacted me, but you want to attend, it’s not too late!

Totally unrelated, but this video is too good not to share again:

OPEN THREAD.

Reader Interactions

37Comments

  1. 1.

    WaterGirl

    Also, some great pics for holidays past:

    Open Thread: New Year's Zooms for Balloon Juice Open Thread: New Year's Zooms for Balloon Juice 1 Open Thread: New Year's Zooms for Balloon Juice 2

    Open Thread: New Year's Zooms for Balloon Juice 3

    A happy pic to match the sad one. The Blizzard of 1967 in Chicago was one of the largest snowfalls in the city’s history up until then. That’s my brother. I’m guessing the ‘color’ picture was Christmas of 1969, when I was a sophomore in high school.
    Paul in S. A.
  2. 2.

    VeniceRiley

    Everyone on the news is frustrated at the weird sucky rollout of vaccines.  But I just read an enlightening email in company (large FQHC) from last night. 1) we ordered both vaccines for 2 main sites – one in LA and one in OC. Moderna allocation has already arrived in OC as of yesterday. Employees administering shots have to take a CDC mandatory training Monday. All employees in a webex meeting Tues. afternoon.  I assume next Weds they start with patient facing staff going first.  That’s Weds to Weds. Quite the delay, because we shut for Holidays and Sundays… I expect a faster day to day operation once we are up and running. Probably goes for many senior care and clinic operations in general.

  6. 6.

    HinTN

    If we are so fortunate as to get Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in the Senate we will have two of the best spoken Senators representing the south.

  7. 7.

    mali muso

    If you are looking for a lush romantic movie that harkens back to the glamour of old Hollywood but centers black love, give Sylvie’s Love a try (Prime).  We watched it last night, and it was just what I needed to end 2020.  Link here to a review that sums it up nicely.

    But there is something more that makes Ashe’s amour fou defiant and groundbreaking in its own way. And look no further than the film’s terrific ensemble cast of almost entirely Black and PoC actors to spot it. A movie lacquered in some of the attributes of the Golden Age it might be, but “Sylvie’s Love” is about the very characters the era often disregarded in their output, failing to recognize them as the protagonists of their own stories. Ashe said it best after the Sundance premiere of “Sylvie’s Love” back in January, noting that he was inspired to write his script after looking through old happy photographs of his own family from the 1950s. Seeing how his ancestors carried themselves with love and dignity, he decided to reflect the truth he found in those pictures; an alternate reality not frequently mirrored in cinema about the Black experience, even today. “I wanted to make a film where Black people of the era don’t exist through adversity, but through love,” he said.

  8. 8.

    debbie

    @WaterGirl:

    I’d like to see a state-by-state reporting about how the vaccines are being rolled out. Dimes to doughnuts, it’s smoother (relatively speaking) in the Trump-favored states.

  11. 11.

    Uncle Cosmo

    That clip is as brilliant as Pete’s regular & consistent pwnings of Faux Noise every time they put him on. Go Jon!

  14. 14.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @debbie: But there could be a lot of reasons for the “smoothness” of a roll-out within a state.

    Imagine if you will a scenario in which the federal government’s entire plan is to simply drop off crates of vaccine and that then everything, absolutely everything, is left up to individual states, most or all of which have no money and had assumed that there would be at least some federal interaction.

    Now imagine a state who’s governor has decided that the ONLY measure of smooth delivery, of “success” with regards to vaccination, is the absolute number of arms into which vaccine has been injected. No other criteria, including the need for follow-up 2nd shots 28 days later, creating vaccination procedures that minimize further infections on-site, prioritizing frontline healthcare workers, etc., matters. Nothing matters except one simple number: how many shots did we give today? THAT state will “win.” That governor will be a “hero.”

    Welcome to Florida.

    BTW, this is arguably a good strategy if the context is a federal clusterfuck wrapped in a fuck-up wrapped in malevolence. It ensures that at least all vaccine material gets into the population immediately.

  15. 15.

    Joe Falco

    I too appreciate Jon rejecting the accusations against Warnock then immediately saying Kelly Loeffler has been campaigning with a Klansman. Not once, not twice, but thrice that Kelly Loeffler is campaigning with a Klansman. A former Klansman, yes, but someone she has no trouble tying herself to.

  16. 16.

    Ruckus

    Water Girl

    I emailed you to participate in the Zooms and haven’t seen an answer so I’m assuming you didn’t get the message?

  19. 19.

    debbie

    @Another Scott:

    Thanks for this. I can’t figure out what the green bar is showing.

    Currently, Ohio’s gov is angry at reports that 40% of the staff at nursing homes is refusing to be vaccinated. Kinds screws up the plan, I think.

  21. 21.

    Joe Falco

    @Roger Moore: I know! I was expecting someone from Fox to bring it up when Jon brought up the Klansman point! I thought that was part of the training in order to work at Fox News.

  22. 22.

    cain

    @debbie:

    Don’t bet on it. Remember, it’s taken by anti-govt types. Sure they might get favored in terms of delivery, but these people will fuck up on the general infra on getting the vaccine to people. They will ultimately fail. After all, they’ve spent the last 8 months telling everyone the whole thing was not as severe or was even a hoax.

  23. 23.

    sdhays

    @Roger Moore: It would be funny if Ossoff was asked this and he answered, “Who’s Robert Byrd?” I’d bet a lot of the viewing audience doesn’t know, and I’m sure a lot of the Georgia electorate has never heard of him. And he’s been dead for quite some time now.

  25. 25.

    WaterGirl

    @Ruckus: I did get it.  I have you on the list for the zoom, but I had neglected to move you to the New Years Zoom folder, and that’s where I replied to each person in turn, with the zoom info.

    I just moved your message to that folder and sent you the zoom info.  Sorry about that!

  29. 29.

    jackmac

    @WaterGirl: Ah, the Blizzard of ’67 brings up a bunch of memories. It was a hell of a great week to be a kid! We had school buildings that attracted drifts of up to 12-feet and, well, the temptation to jump from the second floor was just too great. Also, the day before the temperature rose into the ’60s, allowing kids to go play outside in shirtsleeves. I had to get up early the next morning to serve a 6 a.m. Mass just as the first light snowflakes started to fall. (Yeah, I was an altar boy and, no, I never was bothered by priests). Anyway, snow was dumped anywhere work crews could deposit it, leading to huge, dirty piles that persisted along Lake Michigan nearly into summer.

  31. 31.

    patrick Il

    @WaterGirl: 
    John Coleman, founder of the weather channel and climate change denialist, was the ABC weatherman in 1967 . I was 19 and lived in Nowherest Indiana which actually got hit worse than Chicango with that ” lake effect” snow. We had 11″ the day before and 39″ during the snowstorm, so we had about 50″ all told. Coleman had predicted 100% (for the first time in his career) that there would no snow that day. He was a better businessman than weatherman.

  33. 33.

    DaveInOz

    Well, I tuned into the last Zoom session for a short while during the day here and got 10 minutes of Dad jokes, so there’s that going for it.

     

    It’s 2021 here already so goodbye to the disaster that was 2020. Half the country was on fire for the first couple of months, then COVID hit and here in Melbourne we had a six month lockdown. But it worked and we were virus free until NSW stuffed it up.

    The good news, my dog Juno had the best year with both of us home for the last 9 months.

  34. 34.

    Jay C

    Is it too late to get a Zoom invite?

    Can’t seem to contact you directly

    Email me (BJ) has my address/

    Tx.

    Jay

  36. 36.

    Jay C

    @WaterGirl:

    Got it.

    And no, AFAICT I’m the only “Jay C”

    I know there’s a “Jay” and a “Jay B’ on the Jackal roster, but I’m not them!!

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