Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

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

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

People are complicated. Love is not.

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

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

This blog will pay for itself.

You cannot shame the shameless.

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

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Republicans in disarray!

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / Late Night Open Thread: Anniversary for A Social-Media Chewtoy

Late Night Open Thread: Anniversary for A Social-Media Chewtoy

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Give America’s Butter Goblin due credit, he is not gonna give up on his fantasies of American totalitarians attacking poor, persecuted President Putin….


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50Comments

  2. 2.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jerzy Russian:

    Christ, what an asshole! Tracey, that is.

    Don’t say that about someone who was beaten to a pulp by Auntie Maxine!

    Oh, wait, proceed.

  3. 3.

    John Revolta

    Last time I saw this dweeb he was skulking around in the weeds outside a military base in Poland, breathlessly reporting that there was military equipment inside. Sadly, he seems to have found his way back.

  4. 4.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @John Revolta:

    Last time I saw this dweeb he was skulking around in the weeds outside a military base in Poland, breathlessly reporting that there was military equipment inside. Sadly, he seems to have found his way back.

    “Breaking news: water is wet!”

    -Michael Tracey, probably

  5. 5.

    Gravenstone

    Gotta appreciate people who are willing to be loudly and frequently wrong online. Gives the rest of us something to point and laugh at.

  7. 7.

    JWR

    Just imagine, somebody actually signs Michael Tracey’s check. In other news:

    Police: 3 Dead, Several Wounded in Philadelphia Shooting
    This story is developing. Check back for updates.

    That’s about it at this late/early hour, though I heard a bit of late news
    that said there were only 2 dead, but who knows? Also, too, FTF2A.

    PS. Aside from the new place running at light speed, (Win10 + Chrome), the Visual and Text tabs are playing peek-a-boo again. It took 5 refresh tries, 1 by using my browsers’ Refresh button, 4 more on the site’s “click here to refresh” link to get them back. Also, too, FTF2A.

  9. 9.

    Major Major Major Major

    God these people are stupid. How can they even breathe without assistance. Lizard brain is untouched I guess. (Total tangent, but if you’re interested in the distinction, you could do way worse than reading the book Other Minds, which is mostly about cephalopod cognition!)

    Greetings from Barcelona! I’m on vacation obviously. My last vacation, I was trying to figure out if I still wanted my job between relatively low comp, a horribly ineffective manager, and The New Guy Who Is An Arrogant Prick Despite Having Deleted Prod Last Fall, And Who, On A Good Day, Is At Least Polite While Throwing Tantrums Until He Gets His Way. Then I organized the 2/3 of the team who hates him into making a semi-formal complaint and now he’s on a performance improvement plan, and also organized the team into agreeing that we need to be two teams, and also our manager got demoted because everybody was underperforming resulting in talent loss due to low comp from bad reviews. Also I said pay me market rate or I quit and it worked.

    Lo and behold I enjoy my job again! So this vacation feels much better, more like a real one. When I get back I’ll be on a team without The Guy Who Deleted Prod. I finally have the mental energy to write again!

  10. 10.

    David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch

    If this was 1940/41 he’d be railing against Roosevelt for sending supplies to England and Russia

  14. 14.

    satby

    @Major Major Major Major:  Barcelona is wonderful, so enjoy! And well done you for organizing a sane resistance at work and making it better instead of just quitting. In this labor market quitting would only have improved your circumstances, but you improved everyone’s.

  15. 15.

    satby

    I follow sooner on Twitter, and he’s had a lot of good zings against the mendaciously stupid for pay Tracey.

  17. 17.

    Major Major Major Major

    @satby: I actually like(d) my job and they do pay market rate (when they aren’t dinging you for bad management) and I am shackled with stock grants, now on year 4, so I have a lot of overlapping vesting going on.

  18. 18.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but in relation to that thing about the AR-15 and the Ukrainian military, it cannot be said often enough that the AR-15 and its derivatives are WEAPONS OF WAR. The right of some schmuck on the street to open-carry an assault or battle rifle is no more sacrosanct than my right to tow around a trailer carrying a fully fueled and armed ballistic missile.

  19. 19.

    satby

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR: Adam has talked about the “gray zone” in conflicts (bolding mine):

    The gray zone describes a set of activities that occur between peace (or cooperation) and war (or armed conflict). A multitude of activities fall into this murky in-between—from nefarious economic activities, influence operations, and cyberattacks to mercenary operations, assassinations, and disinformation campaigns. Generally, gray-zone activities are considered gradualist campaigns by state and non-state actors that combine non-military and quasi-military tools and fall below the threshold of armed conflict. They aim to thwart, destabilize, weaken, or attack an adversary, and they are often tailored toward the vulnerabilities of the target state.

    We’re in a cool civil war that’s getting warmer. Weapons of war are required to destabilize this country and we all know who funds a lot of the right wing-NRA disinfo.

  20. 20.

    lowtechcyclist

    Alex Hazanov has the right idea. Aside from a handful of issues the right is deeply attached to, like guns and abortion, conservatives these days seem to see every issue that comes up, whether foreign or domestic, in terms of its lib-owning potential.

    Ukraine, Covid-19, whatever: the substance doesn’t matter, it’s all about how it can be used as a political club to bash us libs with. And if there aren’t any actual issues that work, they’ll make shit up (CRT, ‘grooming’).

  21. 21.

    matt

    The thing is, Tracey was blocking her and all she did is push the arm he extended to block her path aside to get by.

  22. 22.

    Ken

    @matt: all she did is push the arm he extended to block her path aside

    Textbook definition of assault. Or maybe RICO. I will try to check with Popehat.

  23. 23.

    satby

    @lowtechcyclist: Hopefully, his GOP voting Ukrainian diaspora is taking note of which party has been supporting Ukraine and which has been supporting Putin.I

    Edit: seriously w(here)tf did “drying” as an autocorrect for “supporting” come from?

  25. 25.

    Ken

    @satby: w(here)tf did “drying” as an autocorrect for “supporting” come from?

    The ways of the Algorithm are ineffable, and not the ways of man.

  28. 28.

    Anne Laurie

    @matt: The thing is, Tracey was blocking her and all she did is push the arm he extended to block her path aside to get by.

    … and that caused him a psychic injury from which he has yet to recover.  It’s like the Gamergate guys: just having a woman in ‘their’ space makes them feel like the Indonesian dudes who believe their penises are withdrawing into their abdomens.

    Help, help, the witch has cursed me!!!!

  29. 29.

    Geminid

    @satby: I am interested to see how Ohio’s Ukrainian diaspora votes in that state’s Senate race. When the war began, J.D.Vance made some very dismissive remarks about Ukraine’s cause. Observers said this showed how little Vance knew about his native state. I’ve seen an estimate that 300,000 Ohioans are of Ukrainian descent.

  32. 32.

    sab

    @Geminid: I am also so intetested. Traditionally Republican, but current Republicans seem to be fine with ethnic cleansing of Ukraininism.

  33. 33.

    Geminid

    The Texas 28th CD primary runoff between Henry Cuellar and Jessica Cisneros got a lot of attention at the time, but not so much since. It was very close, and now there is a final count indicating that Cuellar won by 282 votes. The deadline for submitting official vote totals is tomorrow, and Cisneros can request a recount. It would cost $50,000, but her campaign has the money. A recount is unlikely to  change 282 votes, though.

    Cuellar can’t kick much if Cisneros goes for a recount. He first won that seat in 2004 with a recount that determined a close race against the incumbent. Cisneros’ general election campaign won’t be affected much. He’s leaning into his incumbency status, hosting district high school students in Washington, publicizing district natives on his staff, and touting federal projects he has steered to his district through his clout as a senior Appropriations Committee member.

    I’ve seen the 28th CD characterized as safely Democratic, but objective observers typically rate it Lean-D. The Republican candidate is a forty-something Latino lady, Cassie Garcia. The Rio Grande Valley used to be a Democratic stronghold, but there was a big increase in the Valley’s Republican vote between 2016 and 2020 and Republicans will go all out to flip the 28th.

    The Democratic primary was fairly bitter by the end. The prolonged count may have allowed tempers to cool some, and such a strong performance against a powerful incumbent may give Cisneros’ supporters some justification as a moral victory. At least I hope so.

  34. 34.

    Tony Jay

    @lowtechcyclist:

    I still get Mail drops from a fan-site that I used to spend time around, where they have a very strictly enforced NO MODPOL policy to avoid pissing off the author with flame wars.

    I’ve just had the pleasure of seeing one of the wingnut Muskrats get e-slapped for the terminology he used while discussing Elon’s abiding genius and inevitable victory over the forces of stagnation and status-quo.

    Apparently, mass transit, carpooling, cars smaller than train carriages, etc, these are all “Woke ideas that won’t fly in Waco.”

    So yeah, it appears they’ve got themselves to a point where anything that has any kind of community or collective or even conservation aspect to it is ‘Woke’, and therefore bad.

    Wait until they find out about the compulsory LGBQT+CRT radio channels you have to listen to while communistically carpooling! There will be tears of salt from here to Abeline.

  36. 36.

    Geminid

    @debbie: I am looking forward to the debates between Vance and Ryan. That is, if Vance doesn’t chicken out. I think Vance will debate, though. Vance is a fraud, but he thinks highly of his intellectual powers and his miserable message.

  37. 37.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    300,000 is way, way too high. There are about 350,000 people in all of Cleveland. It’s between 30,000 and 50,000 depending on how people describe their national origins which might matter in a close Senate race but has been more important for Democrats in specific House races since they’re clustered in and around Cleveland.

  39. 39.

    Soprano2

    @Tony Jay: That’s not new – conservatives have hated things like mass transit and carpooling for a long time, I guess because being for them indicates we should try to use less gasoline. The only thing that’s different is calling it “woke”. Around here the bus system is atrocious, and people have the attitude that only poor people and the homeless ride it. I haven’t looked lately, but since gas is up to $4.29 at most stations I bet the busses are a lot fuller.

  40. 40.

    Geminid

    @Kay: Thank you for the correction. Either the article I remembered or my memory was in error.

    The smaller cohort of Ukrainian Americans could be supplemented by a Polish-American population that may feel hostile to Russian aggression, as well as immigrants from Lithuania and their descendents.

  41. 41.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    Right. Marcy Kaptur had always had a very close relationship with all those groups. So it could help Kaptur. But if Kaptur is (truly) in danger it’s a bloodbath for Democrats, so +/- 20k in Senate race won’t matter.
    The northern tier of Ohio – Toledo to Cleveland- will be Vance’s biggest challenge and Ryan’s strongest play. The state really has three sections, and only one of them is Appalachia.
    But ultimately Ryan has to do what Fetterman has to do- they have to hold down margins in rural counties – so 65-70% R instead of 75% R and get numbers up in urban and suburban areas. It’s labor intensive. It means a huge effort by the campaigns to gain like 1000 votes in a rural county. It’s a hard grind.

  42. 42.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    Kaptur has one more headwind and it’s abortion. She is Catholic and pro life (but obviously doesn’t want abortion banned) and she has always been able to thread that needle but she can’t use abortion as a rallying cry to bring out our voters or she alienates some of her strongest support which are ethnic urban and suburban Catholics, kind of “legacy Democrats”, who mostly got to the Party thru labor unions. They still exist and they’re still important in Ohio.

  43. 43.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    You don’t think she can use that new law where any citizen has the right to look down little girls’ pants? Every freakin’ Democrat should be using that law. 

  44. 44.

    Kay

    @debbie: 

    Oh, God, I don’t know. Any trans issue is going to be fraught for a Democrat like Kaptur. You know how these people are. They’re conventional.

  45. 45.

    Geminid

    @Kay: Matt Dolan got 23% of the vote in Ohio’s Republican Senate primary. Do you think very many of Dolan’s Republican voters will defect to Ryan and Kaptur?

  46. 46.

    Kay

    @Geminid: 

    I think it depends in whether Vance is able to pull off his scam, which is “fancy person moderate” in suburban areas and “fake hillbilly” in rural areas. Vance is nothing- he’s empty. People either will or won’t fill that space up with something they find acceptable.
    Ryan is a long shot. It’s a Trump + 8 state. That’s the bottom line. There was a good poll for Ryan last week but the pollster sucks and wildly missed 2018- Ohio has become hard to poll, like Michigan always was.

  47. 47.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    If she presents this as child abuse and abuse of privacy, I think it can gain traction. This law is probably the most offensive law I’ve ever witnessed.

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