Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

How stupid are these people?

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

In after Baud. Damn.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Let me file that under fuck it.

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

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

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

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Peak wingnut was a lie.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / Oh Look, All the Stupid Shit I said 15-20 Years Ago Is Back

Reader Interactions

57Comments

  4. 4.

    bbleh

    Congratulations!  (Remember what I said about fire and moonshine and destruction of equipment?)

  8. 8.

    Ohio Mom

    Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

    Ohio Son had his first cavity ever filled today. He was impressed with how long it takes Novocain to wear off. It took about as long as it did for Balloon Juice to reappear. A long afternoon on both accounts.

  9. 9.

    CaseyL

    A better way to see it is how far you’ve come since then.

    At least, that’s what I tell myself.

  11. 11.

    piratedan

    so in short, we learned that DJT is the actual essence of Republican politics…

    1. You can’t tell him what he can do
    2. He tells you what to do…

    wonder how the rest of those GOP spear carriers felt when confronted with that reality… obviously the answer is poorly.

  15. 15.

    Grumpy Old Railroader

    It’s okay John. I got drafted into the infantry in Vietnam as an apolitical testosterone fueled youngster and came back as an anti-war hippie. Slowly became a Berkeley Barb (newspaper) radical and border line communist before slowly maturing over the years to a fiscal conservative but social liberal before morphing again into my present progressive being. I’ve studied the Christian Bible both new and old testaments, dabbled in New Age woo woo and swung over to Buddhism before becoming agnostic .

    So yeah, I said a lot of stupid shit and did a few horrible things over my life span. Also too and more, people that say if they had to live their life over they wouldn’t change a thing? I call BS. Yeah, we all carry baggage. But it is how you carry it that shows your mettle. That is what counts and only you know if you have it or not.

  16. 16.

    WaterGirl

    Am I the only one who feels more calm just having all of Balloon Juice under one roof again?

    (Or most of it anyway, there are still some gaps to fill in.)

  17. 17.

    piratedan

    @WaterGirl: nope, but tbh, if we had lost our past in order to preserve our future, I could understand it (not that it was the fault of anyone running the blog).

  19. 19.

    mrmoshpotato

    @WaterGirl:

    Am I the only one who feels more calm just having all of Balloon Juice under one roof again?

    (Or most of it anyway, there are still some gaps to fill in.)

    No.  It’s great that everything (most?) of it could be recovered.

  20. 20.

    Urza

    @WaterGirl: You’ve been doing most of the maintenance for some time now, of course it makes you feel better to get it all back.  And a well deserved breath of relaxation it should be for you.

  22. 22.

    LeftCoastYankee

    That is the point of being a jackass as you get older… so you will say stupid shit to the end of your days.  That’s what one of the non-GUNS! amendments says or something….

  23. 23.

    ryan

    I actually found Balloon Juice back in 03 or 04.  I was trying to understand how people could support the Iraq war and I watched you change positions.  It was really fascinating and gave me hope that other republicans might realize what was going on with the GOP.

    I have since lost that hope.

  24. 24.

    CaseyL

    @WaterGirl: I imagine what you may be feeling is overwhelming relief that the merger and migration went off without a hitch… and a fervent prayer to never have to do it again.

  25. 25.

    Misterpuff

    John,

     

    Thanks for getting pissed or full of yourself enough to start this blog. You created a community, that has evolved and changed as you have, as all of us do. I always feel comfortable and respected here.

  27. 27.

    BigJimSlade

    @WaterGirl: It’s great!

    I think I’ll celebrate by doing an “On the road” post for that missing day from the Dolomites last year (not tonight, but soon). Anyone want to go back to the Dolomites? After all, I have to post that before I go through all my France/Switzerland pictures from the beginning of this month :-) :-)  And, even better, my covid’s almost gone from the flight back!

  29. 29.

    Urza

    @ryan: The Terri Schiavo case for me and ditto the rest.  I used to have hope in humanity and Americans even during the Bush years when it started becoming obvious.  LOooooong gone now.

  30. 30.

    prostratedragon

    Can’t get in on my desktop for some reason.  Only now getting in on the android.

  31. 31.

    Ken

    Personally I plan to claim that all of my stupid and/or embarrassing old comments were corrupted when they were restored from the backup.

  33. 33.

    JWR

    @ryan: I was directed here by Markos, of GOS fame, when he, Markos, made an “incendiary” comment about the mercs in Iraq being shot, dragged, hung and burned. Markos pointed to John as a “gettable” warmonger. I didn’t stick around here for a while, and then FDL (firedoglake) went batshit over HRC losing to Obama, and I’ve been here ever since. But I’ll never forget Markos’ defense of Mr. Cole.

  34. 34.

    Old School

    @WaterGirl:

    Am I the only one who feels more calm just having all of Balloon Juice under one roof again?

    You still deserve two cupcakes tomorrow even if you are calmer,

  37. 37.

    James E Powell

    I have no memory of how or why or when I first came to this blog, but there must have been something about it I liked. I’m thinking it was that there were posts about dogs & cats, food, other things not politics.

  38. 38.

    prostratedragon

    @Urza:  Something like that, but it needed more, since I wasn’t getting any site all of a sudden — some kind of interrupt I guess. Cycled both router and machine, and it’s all fine now.​

    ETA: Linux/Mozilla/AMD, if anyone’s wondering.

  45. 45.

    SFAW

    Well, in fairness, John, some of us say stupid shit now, in this joint. If your only “stupid shit” is 15 years old, you’re WAY ahead of the game.

    I, for one, am glad you’ve kept this place open all these years.

    I’m also glad WaterGirl continues to do such an EXCELLENT job.

  46. 46.

    NotMax

    @prostratedragon

    There are a multitude of other methods to accomplish the same thing but if Firefox is already open, click on Tools — Settings — Privacy & Security — Cookies and Site Data — Clear Data — press Clear button in the pop-up.

    Just be sure not to accidentally choose clearing the adjacent Logins & Passwords option.

  47. 47.

    Msb

    John, that’s why we need records of the past. They provide a trail we can retrace  to find out where we have been stupid, so we can at least try to make new mistakes.

  48. 48.

    weasel

    Hooray! Had a pile of bookmarked articles to read I can get back to now.  Thanks for all the work to all of the people that brought this place back to where it belongs

  49. 49.

    MikeField

    @JWR: Is this an insight into why folks here seem to hate Daily Kos? After this site came back up, I was surprised by the venom of commenters who ‘were forced to go to DK’ — and those that simply refused to do so. I rely on both and admire both and don’t see a lot of conflict in worldview but perhaps I am not perceptive enough?  That said, if I faced eternity with just one choice I would be BJ forever.

  51. 51.

    Argiope

    @BigJimSlade: Dead thread, but thanks to you we were in the Dolomites last month. Wowza! Best hikes of my life.  Thank you for your OTR photos and the inspiration.

  53. 53.

    Antonius

    Many thanks to Watergirl and the whole team. Let the Karmic wheel turn once more.

  55. 55.

    dyspeptic

    15 years ago, I  first started reading BJ to piss me off. Now I read it to piss me off, but it in a completely different way. Progress!

  56. 56.

    BigJimSlade

    @Argiope: Yay! My pleasure! Aren’t they great?!
    I probably explained this in one of my posts, but my inspiration was the flickr extension in chrome (each new tab/window shows a picture from flickr) – pictures of Tre Cime kept coming up and I decided I have to go there. First trip we stayed in Cortina, 2nd one in Ortisei (Val Gardena). Both were great locations.

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