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Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

A fool as well as an oath-breaker.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

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

Come on, man.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

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

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

In my day, never was longer.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

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You are here: Home / Archives for 2024

Archives for 2024

Late Night Open Thread: Oops, They Did It Again…

by Anne Laurie|  September 9, 20243:58 am| 116 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Trumpery

It’s funny how everyone has to suffer through a billionaires midlife crisis.

— Bob Sampson (@bobsalpha1) September 7, 2024

Alternate soundtrack: Who’s Zooming Scamming Who?

I'm sure the guy who spent $44 billion to turn this app into a Nazi bot scam farm and created a car with doors that can literally be peeled off like a Fruit Roll Up will do a great job streamlining the VA. pic.twitter.com/S4kl8YXvhO

— Tim Onion (@oneunderscore__) September 5, 2024

definitely excited to have this commission led by the man who purchased an ad sales business for twice its value and fired all the income producing employees because he suspected them of wokeness https://t.co/r2eWAYkOpK

— flglmn (@flglmn) September 5, 2024

Of course, Elmo’s gonna be a little busy with his *existing* duties for the immediate future…

Many advertisers plan to cut their spending on X next year, the biggest recorded pullback from any top ad platform, Kantar finds. https://t.co/5Qu4h6Yplu

— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 5, 2024

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Late Night Open Thread: <em> Oops, They Did It Again…</em>Post + Comments (116)

Last Call for the Quilt Raffle – winners will be drawn by Monday evening so there’s still time to make sure you’re on the list if you bought tickets

by WaterGirl|  September 8, 20249:15 pm| 9 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

native quilt raffle

If you donated to the raffle and you aren’t on the list below, please send me email by 6:30 Eastern time.

Also, here is the updated list of people entered in the raffle.  Please check my work.

SORTED BY NYM (or first name or initials if you didn’t give me your nym)

Update: we still have around 52 tickets worth of $$ in the quilt raffle thermometer that I don’t have names for.  Maybe some were just donations.  But I want to make sure that everyone who bought a ticket and wants to be in the raffle gets a chance to speak up.

Ann

1

artemis

1

Avalie

more than 1

Banditqueen

1

Barbara

more than 1

Bil Alverson

more than 1

Blue Guitarist

more than 1

Cam

more than 1

Chris

1

Christie

more than 1

Cliosfanboy

1

Constance

1

cwmoss

1

Cynthia

more than 1

Darkrose

1

Dmkingto

more than 1

dnfree

1

Eric

1

evodevo

1

Frank

1

Fraud Guy

1

GB

more than 1

GB in the HC

1

GH

1

gkoutnik

more than 1

HinTN

more than 1

HN

more than 1

Jackie in NC

more than 1

James

more than 1

JanieM

1

Jim

1

Joe

1

Ken

more than 1

KM

1

Kristine

1

longtime lurker

more than 1

Luci

1

lurker

1

lurker JK

1

Madeleine

more than 1

Marleedog

more than 1

Memory Pallas

more than 1

Nancy

more than 1

Needs more dogs

more than 1

netto

1

Patrick G

1

Peggy

1

PT & S

1

RA

1

Rachel

more than 1

Raleigh

more than 1

realbtl

more than 1

RedDirtGirl

1

RH

1

Robin

more than 1

ryk

1

S Cerevisiae

1

Sandy

1

Shane in SLC

more than 1

silvery

more than 1

skyweaver

1

Stephen M

1

Stephen W

1

Subaru Diane

1

Talaith

     more than 1     

TL

1

tokyocali

more than 1

Van Buren

1

way2blue

more than 1

WW

1

Zach

1

 

Last Call for the Quilt Raffle – winners will be drawn by Monday evening so there’s still time to make sure you’re on the list if you bought ticketsPost + Comments (9)

War for Ukraine Day 928: A Quick Sunday Night Update

by Adam L Silverman|  September 8, 20249:00 pm| 30 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Iran, Israel, Military, Open Threads, Russia, Silverman on Security, United Kingdom, War, War in Ukraine

Three quick housekeeping notes. First, Rosie is doing great. She’s got all of this week off before her next chemo treatment a week from Monday. Thank you for all the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Second, how about everyone dial it back a notch or two in the comments. I get that these updates aren’t fun to read, that everyone of good conscience is bothered by what is happening in Ukraine, as well as in other places like Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel, and Sudan, that I simply don’t have the time and energy to cover. But how about we don’t go after each other if we can avoid it.

Three, last week was very long, despite it being short because of the Labor Day holiday here in the US. And it’s been a long weekend as well. So, I’m going to just run down the basics tonight.

The Russians opened up on Derhaci in Kharkiv Oblast today:

One person died, and at least 13 were injured in today’s russian attack on Derhaci. A child is among the injured. https://t.co/RPHyhi88rN pic.twitter.com/KaZ69Kh6a2

— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) September 8, 2024

And have just launched at least on glide bomb on a target in Kharkiv around 8:10 PM EDT/3:10 AM local time in Ukraine.

Explosion in Kharkiv ‼️ russian glide bombs struck the city s few minutes ago.

— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) September 9, 2024

President Zelenskyy returned from his official travel and has posted a new address. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

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War for Ukraine Day 928: A Quick Sunday Night UpdatePost + Comments (30)

Fun Read: ‘Disgraced Conservative Media Creep Gets Commanders Employee Fired With Hidden-Camera Video’

by Anne Laurie|  September 8, 20248:03 pm| 69 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Sports

Disgraced conservative media creep gets Commanders employee fired with hidden-camera video 🎁 https://t.co/OlMv5cGVNh

— Defector (@DefectorMedia) September 7, 2024

Since there’s a gift link, here’s the always brilliant Dave Roth’s evisceration of JOKeefe’s latest grift:

Back when the conservative activist James O’Keefe first made his mark in the deceptively edited hidden-camera sting video business 15 years ago, he probably did not envision spending his early forties masterminding an operation that would lead to the firing of a mid-level Washington Commanders employee for some out-of-pocket things he said on a pair of secretly recorded dates. O’Keefe, one of the more baroquely damaged defectives in reactionary media, is destroying less notable lives now than he did during the years when the videos he produced led to the resignations of NPR executives and the collapse of the activist organization ACORN, but his rancid body of work is compelling proof that the destruction is something like its own reward for him.

O’Keefe’s taste in enemies has never been especially creative, which reflects both what vintage of conservative he is—vain, pretentious, and relentlessly aggrieved, with strong notes of metro-NYC suburbia psychosis on the finish—and the business that he’s in. Project Veritas, which O’Keefe built by crafting videos that exposed various conservative culture-war enemies in ways built to fit their laziest media caricatures, was a nonprofit business supported by rich conservatives, and so generally aimed to scratch the recurring itches of those old, dull, nasty people. Sometimes, as with ACORN, O’Keefe got the results he sought. Mostly, he succeeded in helping people whose politics revolve around being scandalized and upset remain in their desired state of agitation, and in raising money from them to help with his many lawsuits…

Project Veritas, which O’Keefe left in 2023, isn’t officially dead. But the organization that produced the video recorded over a pair of dates in June, by a woman whom former Commanders employee Rael Enteen met on the dating app Hinge, is called O’Keefe Media Group. It’s his old endeavor with a new name, and with more of him in the monitors. “O’Keefe is seen frequently in the video that goes nearly 11 minutes long,” Alex Simon at SFGate wrote. “Clips of Enteen speaking to the O’Keefe Media Group agent are interspersed with narration by O’Keefe himself.” The comments for which Enteen was first suspended and then fired were rude: He called NFL fans “high-school-educated alcoholics,” players “dumb as hell,” and commissioner Roger Goodell “a puppet” of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who Enteen said he believed “hates gay people, black people.”

The news value of a middling NFL team’s Senior VP Of Content popping off on what he thinks is a date is hard to plot on any kind of politics. By now, most of the dreariest conservative dead-enders have let go of calling the league elitist and woke. It might be easier to understand as O’Keefe emphasizing the beat over the lyrics, and trusting the nastiness to get him over in the absence of anything more significant. In a recent feature for Rolling Stone, Laura Jedeed suggested that this was the direction O’Keefe had in mind for his new enterprise, which he “envisioned [as] a decentralized empire of citizen journalists across the country—’the Uber of Journalism,’ as he put it to podcast host Jack Posobiec—where would-be citizen journalists could sign up for O’Keefe Academy and buy a master class on undercover reporting for $497. They could buy or lease hidden cameras and sell scoops to OMG: $3,000 per story, with a bonus if that story went viral.”…

Truly, it is nearly impossible to go broke overestimating the gullibility of today’s “conservatives”.

Fun Read: <em>‘Disgraced Conservative Media Creep Gets Commanders Employee Fired With Hidden-Camera Video’</em>Post + Comments (69)

Medium Cool – Love Them or Hate Them, Movies & Shows Based on Comic Book Characters

by WaterGirl|  September 8, 20247:00 pm| 253 Comments

This post is in: Medium Cool, Culture as a Hedge Against This Soul-Sucking Political Miasma We're Living In

Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

Black Panther movie poster, with characters from Wakanda

Tonight let’s talk about movies and shows that are based on characters that originated in comic books.

Love them?  Hate them?  Should they stay true to character or is it okay if the original stories and characters are jumping off points?

Has anything big as big as Black Panther was 5 years ago?

Speaking of jumping off points, this post is wide open for anything related to comic book characters. Discussion need not be limited to the small bit of framing supplied here.  Which is always true of Medium Cool, but particularly so for this one.

Medium Cool – Love Them or Hate Them, Movies & Shows Based on Comic Book CharactersPost + Comments (253)

Trumpery Open Thread: Childcare & Word Salad

by Anne Laurie|  September 8, 20245:48 pm| 56 Comments

This post is in: Elections 2024, Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Republicans in Disarray!, Trumpery

Childcare / Word Salad - STOCKPILE

(John Deering via GoComics.com)

 

Journalist: Trump's economic speech today sounded like it was just words randomly chosen out of the dictionary. To the extent that he said anything coherent, it was a promise of more corporate tax handouts and higher tariffs, which would raise costs for everyday Americans pic.twitter.com/pZhor6VltT

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 5, 2024

Benjy you're agreeing that his incoherence and lack of mental fitness is an ongoing story. News outlets should report on this ongoing story! https://t.co/LqR0QH55DO

— Queerhawk 🏳️‍🌈 | 🇺🇦| 🛡 (@alwaysadorecats) September 5, 2024

… huh pic.twitter.com/Am6MQdFZo4

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 7, 2024

I put other strange, incoherent things into the Trump headline machine to see what headlines it would spit out. “The Silence of the Lambs” gave me “In Impromptu Remarks, Buffalo Bill Stresses Importance of Moisturizing.” https://t.co/IxcFwmEDLk

— Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) September 7, 2024

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Trumpery Open Thread: Childcare & Word SaladPost + Comments (56)

BeetleJuice Boebert: Open Thread

by TaMara|  September 8, 20244:05 pm| 74 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

There was some good conversations going on in the last post I made, talking about some quiet candidates that look like they might pull off unexpected wins.

Some knowledgeable folks talking more about Dan Osborn (I-NE), Tony Vargas (D-NE) and Yadira Careveo (D-CO)

I had mentioned I didn’t think throwing money at Boebert’s district would be wise, but, as is often the case, I could be wrong about that. Chief Oshkosh pointed us to this video, and I thought enough of it to share here.

I went ahead and donated the $20.24 to Trisha Calverese, especially since it sounds like Yadira Caraveo has some fairly full coffers.

***

Since it’s Sunday, bonus Reggie, taking matters into his own paws when dinner was late.

 

BeetleJuice Boebert: Open Thread

 

Let’s continue the discussion on under-the-radar candidates in your area.  Otherwise, open thread

BeetleJuice Boebert: Open ThreadPost + Comments (74)

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