Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

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

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

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

People are weird.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Consistently wrong since 2002

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Open Thread

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There’s a fundraiser for WisDems (Wisconsin Dems) tomorrow (Sunday) at 8 pm blog time, 7 pm central.

It looks to be a good time.  The casts of West Wing and VEEP are coming together for this, and who knows what they have in stores?  Whatever it is, if you buy a ticket, we can talk about it in the Medium Cool thread next Sunday.

What am I thinking?  This is Balloon Juice, we can talk about it if even if you aren’t attending!

Here’s the link to RSVP and donate to get your “ticket”.

https://twitter.com/OfficialJLD/status/1574860517310550016?s=20&t=tx3YAE3JmvOg7FPIoh6peQ

Our good friends at Voces de la Frontera tell me that the statewide executive positions (Governor, AG, SOS) are in good shape money-wise, so they don’t recommend that we raise funds for then.  Ditto for the senate race.  It’s all going to come down to turnout.

All the Democratic candidates, including Mandela Barnes (running to defeat Ron Johnson) can win if they run up HUGE margins in Dane (Madison) and Milwaukee Counties, pick up some other additional votes in the southwest and northwest corners of the state, and cut into Republican margins elsewhere.

That’s the time-honored recipe for a Democratic victory and it’s no different now that it has been in the past — but success in that game will come down to whether enough infrastructure has been built and whether enough Republican voters are willing to endorse Ron Johnson’s crap once again.

So WisDems is a good place to put our money right now, so if this looks like any fun, you can click above to buy a ticket.

If not, and you would just like to send some coins their way, here’s a thermometer that we made for them in 2021.

I have also asked the folks at Voces if there are more people they could reach with an extra $5k than they could reach without it.  Waiting to hear back.

Also, I loved this image that Omnes linked to earlier this week.  Since this is an open thread, I’m gonna use it here because it makes me laugh.

Reader Interactions

48Comments

  2. 2.

    Joy in FL

    Thanks for the reminder about the WisDems fundraiser tomorrow. I just clicked on their link and donated so I can attend tomorrow.

  3. 3.

    dnfree

    I started a monthly contribution to Voces de la Frontera way back in 2021 through this thermometer and it is still in effect (I just checked my emails). So is that showing up on the thermometer?

  4. 4.

    sab

    Are we allowed to talk sports? I watched an amazing baseball game today between Cleveland Guardians and Tampa Bay Rays. Scoreless until the bottom of the 15th inning, even though both teams had had people on base at various points.  It was one of those games where I was very sorry that one of the teams had to lose.

  5. 5.

    WaterGirl

    @dnfree: Recurring donations show up in the thermometer they were created with.

    We have had at least 2 different thermometers for Voces, so it will show up on the particular thermometer where you started the recurring donation.

  8. 8.

    Quiltingfool

    Today I filled out pet adoption paperwork; time to get a kitty!  The lady in charge asked me if I wanted a kitten or an adult cat; I said I wanted to see how a cat responded to me instead of choosing based on age.

    Well, I spent a bit of time with 2 cats, both female, both between 1-2 years in age.  They were both very friendly, but one kitty, Allie, put on quite a show!  She flopped and rolled, rubbed her face on my shoes, the whole nine yards.  The other kitty, Daisy, was very sweet, too.

    I then made the mistake of going in the kitten room.  Oh, my, they ALL wanted to go home with me!  One calico was very insistent on getting all my attention and really didn’t want me petting any other kitten.

    I showed Mr. Quiltingfool pictures of the two adult cats and he chose Miss Allie -I would take either cat, but I really liked Allie, and she’s been at the shelter longer than Daisy.  So…I may be getting a new quilt supervisor next week!

  16. 16.

    Suzanne

    We went up to Moraine State Park today for some kid-friendly hiking (i.e. one that a toddler can enjoy without giving up and needing to be carried back to the car). It was beautiful. I had the impulse to look up how much it would be to buy some land and build a house out near there. Then I saw a DOUG MASTRIANO FOR GOVERNOR sign and was reminded why urban life ultimately suits me better.

  17. 17.

    Kent

    @Baud:

    @sab:

    Seattle makes the playoffs after 20 years and they get past the first round!

    That was a game for the ages

    EDIT…the Mariners game.  Apparently the other one was good too.

  20. 20.

    Geminid

    London based opposition news site Iran International reported a hack of this evening’s Iranian state television news show.

    A clip of a speech by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameni abruptly changed to a screen showing pictures of Mahsa Amini and three other young women murdered recently by security forces, with a message in Farsi script: “The blood of our youths is on your hands.” Above that was a picture of Khameni with crosshairs on his forehead.

    There was audio of people chanting “Women, Life, Freedom!” and a call for citizens to join the protests. The hacker group Idalat-e Ali (The Justice of Ali) claimed responsibility.

  22. 22.

    kalakal

    We have our next hurricane of the season. Julia just formed, it’s heading east to west across the southern Caribbean and will hit Nicaragua tomorrow

  23. 23.

    sab

    @Baud: @Kent: @Jackie:

    Both games were really exciting in completely different ways. Cleveland v Tampa Bay was superlative pitching and good fielding. No score at all for 14 innings!  (I love double plays.) Seattle v Toronto was good hitting. (Quite the recovery by  Seattle.)

  26. 26.

    Starfish

    @Geminid: It’s London based? I was desperately trying to understand enough Farsi to figure out what they were saying on their YouTube channel.

    This massive night crowd in Tehran tonight despite all shootings & mass arrests by regime forces in the last 21 days is significant. Not just for its size but also the area of the city it happened in. Southern much poorer areas that has seen a lot less protest so far. #MahsaAmini pic.twitter.com/yOvM8ujyYp
    — Bahman Kalbasi (@BahmanKalbasi) October 9, 2022

  27. 27.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    We started watching the third season of Derry Girls. It made me laugh. We still have to use the close captioning, though. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to make out what they’re saying

  28. 28.

    FelonyGovt

    Re: Crimea (Not usually a fan of puns, but…)


    This Mets vs San Diego baseball playoff game (I am a 50+ year Mets fan, for my sins) is NOT helping my blood pressure. 

  31. 31.

    lowtechcyclist

    Going to a high-school reunion for the first time in 30 years.  It’s an “all-class” reunion, but there were only about 30 years’ worth of graduating classes, since my HS got merged into another one in the mid-1980s.  A friend and I are going there together.  I have no idea if we’ll run into anyone we knew more than casually.  Since I haven’t seen my friend since February, worst that can happen is we spend the afternoon catching up with each other.

  34. 34.

    Anotherlurker

    On other matters, I think I am dealing with a mild case of COVID.

    Classic COVID symptoms started on Monday: sore throat, dry cough, body aches, gastric issues, severe fatigue and low grade fever. Still showing symptoms today but sore throat is a bit better.

    However, I home tested 3X with no positive results.

    ‘Tis a mystery .

  36. 36.

    dnfree

    @Anotherlurker: You might want to go to an urgent care or something similar.  My husband had symptoms last November and the urgent care place tested him for both Covid and flu.  Turned out he had flu, which they said at that time they were seeing a lot of.  They gave him Tamiflu, which helped.

  40. 40.

    Jackie

    @Yutsano: Ain’t it the truth! We need our old My Oh My! And Mojo! signs for this series! I Believe!!! I wore my very old Edgar jersey both games – I knew it would be good luck!😁

  41. 41.

    Professor Bigfoot

    Our adoptee mastiff Sweetie is integrating into the household pretty well, now. Silvie (SillyCat) and Sweetie are becoming best buds, though the other three cats are still staying far TF away.

    The Yorkies are still very dubious of this great bloody mastiff, but I think they’re getting used to the idea of having her around.

    Little by little…

  48. 48.

    sab

    @sab: New neighbors next door with a wonderful German shepherd. Gorgeous and polite.

    Our pitbull finally met him yesterday. She was a complete barking asshole. She grew up with dogs, but they were chihuahuas. She has never met an extremely large dog before. He is huge, but he was just politely hoping to sniff her nose.

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