Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

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

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

The lights are all blinking red.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

“They all knew.”

Trump should be leading, not lying.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

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Archives for 2020

¿Tres?

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Breaking on a Friday afternoon:

In a reversal, former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg said Friday he will permit his company to release women who have accused him of sexual harassment from three non-disclosure agreements, after increasing pressure from his fellow presidential candidates.

Bloomberg also said that, after “a lot of reflecting,” he would not offer confidential agreements to resolve sexual misconduct claims going forward.

“I recognize that NDAs, particularly when they are used in the context of sexual harassment and sexual assault, promote a culture of silence in the workplace and contribute to a culture of women not feeling safe or supported,” Bloomberg said in a statement.

Bloomberg said the company has identified three non-disclosure agreements this would pertain to, and that if they’d like to speak about their allegations they may ask for a release.

Perhaps I’m cynical, but I’m doubting that there were only three. I mean, we all know that there were “a very few,” but I’m thinking two digits, minimum.

He has the best consultants money can buy. I was listening to Pod Save America’s debate review today, and they were pointing out that Bloomberg’s performance reflected a stubborn candidate who didn’t listen to the best consultants money can buy. To quote a song Betty might like, “Quizás, Quizás, Quizás” (Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps). My alternate theory is that, just maybe, the “best consultants money can buy” aren’t that good. This little gambit sure doesn’t seem like a genius move, but I guess even the best can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit.

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Listen Up

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I almost did a post about brokered conventions, but then I remembered something my old gran used to say about “borrowing trouble” and thought better of it. Instead, here is quite possibly the coolest song ever recorded, Só Tinha de Ser Com Você, from Brazilian singer Elis Regina and singer-songwriter-pianist Antônio Carlos Jobim:

Ah, that’s better.

Did your old gran have a saying about borrowing trouble? I had two old grans and was lucky enough to keep both decades after most of my peers lost their old grans; both of mine died within the last 5 years. They were very different women.

One was a ferociously judgmental yet adventurous school teacher, Baptist preacher’s wife and health food nut who lived in town and only listened to Christian programming on the radio. The other was the occasionally foul-mouthed, cigarette-smoking wife of a long-haul trucker who lived out in the country and listened to Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline.

They had one thing in common: both were known for making cutting remarks. (Maybe it’s an old Southern lady thing.) Oh, and the other thing they had in common: all the vegetables they cooked were bacon flavored. In fact, until I was an adult, I thought all vegetables just were.

Schoolteacher Gran once took a look at me and asked if I used a lawn mower to cut my hair (it was the late 80s, and my ‘do was quite stylish for the time, thankyewveramuch!). Country Gran once informed a plumpish cousin that while the top the cousin was wearing might be sold in that size, that didn’t mean she should wear it. Ouch!

PS: If you do want to read something about brokered conventions, Charles P. Pierce covers it here.

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Everybody Works Too Damn Much

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This story was on the TPM morning reading list:

The idea of a four-day workweek might sound crazy, especially in America, where the number of hours worked has been climbing and where cellphones and email remind us of our jobs 24/7.

But in some places, the four-day concept is taking off like a viral meme. Many employers aren’t just moving to 10-hour shifts, four days a week, as companies like Shake Shack are doing; they’re going to a 32-hour week — without cutting pay. In exchange, employers are asking their workers to get their jobs done in a compressed amount of time.

Last month, a Washington state senator introduced a bill to reduce the standard workweek to 32 hours. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is backing a parliamentary proposal to shift to a four-day week. Politicians in Britain and Finland are considering something similar.

I went to the grocery store this morning, since I work from home and have a flexible schedule, and it’s a big hassle to go when everyone else is out of work. It’s school break week here in Rochester, so a lot of kids were shopping with both of their parents, which of course isn’t the case on school days. The younger kids were just loving life: no school, and time with Mom and Dad, a very precious commodity when both parents work 40 hour weeks. It’s even worse for children of parents who have to work multiple jobs because of the shitty low wages and crap benefits.

In our robot manufacturing and service economy future, less time worked for more pay, and semi-skilled jobs that pay enough so only one parent has to work, would mean that we would have enough jobs to go around, and that parents could spend more time with their kids. But it’s kind of like a Presidential candidate saying he or she is an atheist, or perhaps even worse, for one of them to say we all need to work less. How would the Waltons and Jeff Bezos survive if they paid their employees more for less work? It’s simply unimaginable.

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Playing to Win: Day 2

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Note for the day:

The first Playing to Win went up yesterday.  For now, I’m thinking maybe we’ll try a M-W-F schedule for these posts.  But perhaps a weekend post would be better for some of you?  If you are interested in these posts, feel free to share your thoughts on frequency and times.  I found it inspiring yesterday to see what everyone is doing.  But this is for you guys, so please speak up about what you want and what works for you.

*****

A couple of our jackals requested a daily political “action” thread, so how about if we try it for a bit and see how that goes?  If you guys think it’s useful, we can keep it up, and if it ends up being more “seemed like a good idea at the time,” then we can let it go.

The goal is a poll-free, spin-free, prognostication-free, media-free, what’s-wrong-with-the-other-candidate-free-zone – a political thread where the focus is on ACTION:  What can be done to help our candidates, and what are we doing to help them, every day?

The hope is that this will help provide inspiration, and encourage action, as an alternative to anger, frustration and despair.

Everyone is free to chime in about what they are doing for their their preferred candidate.  What actions are we taking at Balloon Juice, individually or collectively, to help candidates we believe in?

What might you like to do, if you weren’t stuck on not quite knowing how to go from thinking about doing something to actually doing something?

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The ACA benefits from de-centering

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The Kaiser Family Foundation team of analysts have a new Health Affairs article on ACA polling.  The Hill has a good graph:


A few things happened in March 2017. That was when the ACA was under threat of repeal, a lot of people who disapproved of the ACA because it did not do enough in their opinions became supporters as the options were the ACA or Repeal and maybe Replace instead of the ACA vs. Perfect Plan that could never get 218 votes and then in 2018-2019-2020, it has been decentralized from our political discussion. It is chugging along without being an existential political struggle and it is becoming background status quo that is either helpful to people or barely noticable to the vast majority of people.

Now the ACA is in conference again at the Supreme Court this morning. The Justices are discussing whether or not they want to take Texas v. Azar, the trolling case that argues that since Congress eliminated zero-ed out the individual mandate penalty amount, they meant to eliminate the entire law. The ACA might resurface again in the next few months as a major partisan issue if the Justices agree to expedite the case even as they have options for a nine month punt or a two or three year punt.

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Bring On the New Messiah

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Trump didn’t like an actual-factual professional at acting DNI, because he told the truth:

A senior U.S. intelligence official told lawmakers last week that Russia wants to see President Trump reelected, viewing his administration as more favorable to the Kremlin’s interests, according to people who were briefed on the comments.

After learning of that analysis, which was provided to House lawmakers in a classified hearing, Trump grew angry at his acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, in the Oval Office, seeing Maguire and his staff as disloyal for speaking to Congress about Russia’s perceived preference. The intelligence official’s analysis and Trump’s furious response ­ruined Maguire’s chances of becoming the permanent intelligence chief, according to people familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

So instead we get another clown, Richard Grennell, Ambassador to Germany and FoxNews asslicker for Trump. This guy is so qualified that he’s going to be acting DNI and keep his current job. I’m not surprised by that because incompetent managers like Trump like having one or two “go to” guys for everything, because figuring out who’s in charge of what is too difficult for them.

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Friday Morning Open Thread: The Media Has ‘Discovered’ Elizabeth Warren

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She gave an absolutely bravura performance, and she’s earned all the media she’s getting. But I swear, some of the Media Village Idiots’ new improved attitude is just that they needed a new “star”. Crazy Bernie didn’t do anything he hasn’t been doing since forever, Uncle Joe was low-energy, they can’t bear to waste their highly-compensated talents on ‘no-hopers’ like Buttigieg and Klobuchar if the best those two deliver is a vinegary version of Midwestern ‘Nice’.

And I suspect, in their heart of hearts, they resent Mike Bloomberg’s Here’s a check, make it rain, peasants attitude. Sure, he lays out a nice buffet at his press avails… and there’s always the chance of winning some of those sweet Bloomberg bucks… but they can tell he doesn’t actually respect them. He won’t even pretend he loves them, and it’s not like he didn’t get his chances up there. Making Bernie wag his finger and yell is too easy to be ‘news’!

Speaking of prominent people whose feelings are very, very hurt… the Oval Office Occupant must’ve not-loved this:

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