• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

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

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Most of you should go to bed and try to be better Jackals in the morning.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

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

Consistently wrong since 2002

This blog will pay for itself.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Mobile Menu

  • 2026 Targeted Political Fundraising
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2026 Activism
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Archives for 2024

Archives for 2024

Double Angel Match for Four Directions Montana 6x $25 donations while it lasts

by WaterGirl|  September 3, 20245:25 pm| 41 Comments

This post is in: Political Action, Political Fundraising, Targeted Political Fundraising 2023-24

So the holiday has come and gone, and so the “Angels will match anything that goes into the thermometer until it reaches $22,500” has come and gone, too.

$2,500 of Angel match money has been added added to the thermometer, and a bit more is on the way.

But we still have a ways to go to hit our $30,000 goal!

Remember, we have an external match, and with this double-angel match, your donation will be 6x until we hit $750 dollars in small donations – up to $25 per person.


Donate

Double Angel Match for Four Directions Montana <s>6x $25 donations while it lasts</s>Post + Comments (41)

Yes They Would Do This

by @heymistermix.com|  September 3, 20244:27 pm| 109 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

Yes They Would Do This

Delete Facebook:

In a pitch deck to prospective customers, one of Facebook’s alleged marketing partners explained how it listens to users’ smartphone microphones and advertises to them accordingly.

As 404 Media reports based on documents leaked to its reporters, the TV and radio news giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims that its so-called “Active Listening” software uses artificial intelligence to “capture real-time intent data by listening to our conversations.”

“Advertisers can pair this voice-data with behavioral data to target in-market consumers,” the deck continues.

In the same slideshow, CMG counted Facebook, Google, and Amazon as clients, though it didn’t specify whether they were involved in the “Active Listening” service. After 404 reached out to Google about its partnership, the tech giant removed the media group from the site for its “Partners Program.”

A Meta spokesperson also pushed back in a statement, saying that CMG was a general partner, not a partner in the program advertised in the deck.

“Meta does not use your phone’s microphone for ads and we’ve been public about this for years,” the statement read. “We are reaching out to CMG to get them to clarify that their program is not based on Meta data.”

I use Facebook with an fake identity, and I don’t have it on my phone.  My wife has it on her phone, and she swears that she gets ads pushed to her based on things she’s said.  Example:  last night we were chatting about a possible cruise outing and a couple of minutes later, she got a cruise ad relevant to what she was talking about and relevant to our location in her Facebook feed.

Now this could just be a coincidence, but I’m sure not going to trust Zuck’s word on this shit.  I hope this is one of Lina Khan’s next priorities at the FTC — she’s already doing a great job there.

Yes They Would Do ThisPost + Comments (109)

What Does it Mean to Fight? Some Numbers

by @heymistermix.com|  September 3, 20242:40 pm| 137 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

I unintentionally started a series of posts on what it means to fight by asking questions about the Colin Allred campaign in Texas (post 1) and the Tim Ryan campaign in Ohio (post 2).  I was cleaning out my feed reader and found two posts about Texas that are deep dives into what it takes to win in that state and, more importantly, how we judge progress even if we lose there.

First, from the people that run the LBJ account on Twitter, who are a bunch of historians as far as I can tell,  a summary of how they would judge “success” for Allred:

THE STANDARD, AGAIN: Beto won Harris by 15.5. He won Ft. Bend by 12. He won Tarrant by less than one. He lost Collin by 6. He lost Denton by 8. He won Williamson by 2.5. Beto won Hays by 15.

THE TARGETS: And here, we’ll set the target margins based on the minimum for what a Democratic statewide victory would look like in Texas. In a cycle a Democrat won in Texas — Harris would be +30. Fort Bend +20. Tarrant, Collin and Denton in the +5-7 range. Williamson +10. Hays +20. Those are the numbers Allred should be reaching for. Those are numbers, for the most part, I don’t expect Allred to reach. Anything between the numbers Beto put up and the targets of where those numbers need to be is measurable progress.

WHY I HAVEN’T DISCUSSED THE RGV: Because, while it’s not unimportant, it isn’t and shouldn’t be the central focus of the Democratic strategy here. The field of battle is in the suburbs. It shouldn’t be the focus of Hispanic voting outreach either. Quickly — The entire RGV is 1.3 million people. Harris County has 2 million Hispanic people. The choice isn’t Hispanic outreach or the suburbs. The key is Hispanic outreach in the suburbs.

If the county names are confusing, read the whole thing, because they explain both the location of the counties and how they have evolved over the years.  “RGV” is the Rio Grande Valley, a heavily Latino area which everyone in Democratic politics was concerned about when it swung towards Republicans in 2020.  Over at Split Ticket, a couple of the data nerds have mined as much as they can from RGV voting statistics, and have an interesting theory tying the Sanders primary vote to the Trump general election vote:

While it’s true Democratic primary voters are not representative of all general election voters, the sheer correlational strength suggests there is at least some relationship between Trump’s success in Latino communities with economic populism. Additionally, because most Latinos identify as Democrats (44–25%), heavily-Latino areas have much more overlap between their Democratic primary and general electorates. Even if it was not pro-Sanders Latino Democrats who shifted towards Trump, it was their neighbors and family members. These voters live in the same communities and face the same economic realities, and were subsequently attracted to both economically populist candidates.

Looking ahead to 2024, a campaign which wishes to be successful among these voters must have a strong, populist economic plank. Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign appears to be starting to do just that. Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson notes that Harris could be climbing in the polls because she is regaining trust that President Joe Biden lost on handling the economy while simultaneously reviving Latino support that Biden had lost.

Beyond the 2024 election, the growing “nonwhite populism” could transform American partisan politics. If Democrats want to contest increasingly-Latino Texas, they should consider Sanders’ success in Latino areas when forming their economic legislative agenda and electoral platform. If someone seen as racially inflammatory as Trump can win record vote shares along the Mexican border, a Democratic Party seen as weak on working class economic issues could slow or even reverse Democrats’ ascent in Texas and flip the RGV’s 3 congressional districts — and swing Latino communities beyond Texas.

So, just to re-emphasize their point, it isn’t that a bunch of Democratic primary voters voted for Sanders and then decided to vote for Trump in the general, it’s that Sanders’ economic message resonated with them, and the same message delivered by Trump resonated with their lower-information friends and neighbors, who chose to vote for Trump, despite his racism.

Anyway, this is pretty Texas-specific, but Texas is a long-term Democratic project.  Allred might lose, but if he beats Beto’s numbers in the spots that the LBJ team identifies, his campaign did something right.  If the Trump gains in the RGV are reversed, Harris’ message is better for non-college-educated, non-white voters.   And, just like Republicans, we need to keep and nourish our long-term projects, and Texas is definitely a key one of those.

What Does it Mean to Fight? Some NumbersPost + Comments (137)

(Already) Tuesday Morning Open Thread: *Now*, It’s Serious

by Anne Laurie|  September 3, 20248:51 am| 356 Comments

This post is in: Elections 2024, Kamala Harris for President, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat

“When unions are strong, America is strong!” – @VP at Labor Day rally in Michigan. https://t.co/2MdTarJesH

— Vincent Evans (@VinceEvans) September 2, 2024

Vice President Harris: When I am President, we will pass the PRO Act and end union-busting once and for all#LaborDay pic.twitter.com/OfQ9RnzKve

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 2, 2024

Tim Walz continues to be very good at this pic.twitter.com/he2ovVCDUg

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 2, 2024

Walz: They talk about small government. Small enough to be in your bedroom, small enough to be in your exam room, small enough to be in your library telling you the things you should make decisions about. pic.twitter.com/CxsPsAYhZw

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 2, 2024

Walz: The Wall Street Journal… they did another story that said oh, he's actually richer than his statement says because he has a “defined benefit pension plan.” That is my wish for every American to have a defined benefit pension plan. pic.twitter.com/kVYYLa3rNK

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 2, 2024

show full post on front page

(Already) Tuesday Morning Open Thread: *Now*, It’s SeriousPost + Comments (356)

On The Road – JanieM – On the Road

by WaterGirl|  September 3, 20245:00 am| 18 Comments

This post is in: On The Road, Photo Blogging

JanieM

“The road goes ever on and on” – Bilbo Baggins

When I first subscribed to Photoshop and Lightroom, I expected to use them to edit pictures. But Steve from Mendocino and I quickly fell into a pattern where I took the pictures and he did the post-processing, and for me, Lightroom became primarily a tool for keeping my pictures organized.

At a certain point along way I started to use Lightroom’s “Collections” feature to put pictures into categories, like “snow” and “fall color” and “Augusta” and – to my own surprise – “paths and roads.”

These pictures are some of our favorites from the “paths and roads” collection.

On The Road – JanieM – On the RoadPost + Comments (18)

On The Road - JanieM - On the Road 9
Ohio

A path in a cemetery in the town where I grew up. The picture was in the OTR set in 2020 that prompted Steve to wave at me from afar and ask if we could talk about my pictures. This is his edit of the original, which had had no post-processing; at that time I was so uninformed that I thought Photoshop was for adding flying saucers to pictures of American cities. (Per this cover from the July 1985 issue of Whole Earth Review.)

Bigger version of the picture here.

Late Night Open Thread: Tales of the Jagoffwagon

by Anne Laurie|  September 3, 20242:46 am| 123 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Tech News & Issues, Schadenfreude

Late Night Open Thread: Tales of the Jaggoffwagon
 
A little schadenfreude, as we gird up for the work week…

This feels like the start of a Transformers movie where Optimus Prime gets divorced. pic.twitter.com/icY3RLSQFv

— Andrew Ti (@ANDREWTI) August 26, 2024


(Optimus Prime, Transformer)

Elsewhere in the Cybergork Universe:

The mysteries of life, a story in two parts pic.twitter.com/xUEWzCjgi6

— lcamtuf (@lcamtuf) August 27, 2024


Responses from a whole bunch of snarksters…

didn’t even flag the load smh

Maybe he didn’t think he would actually get far and was just proving his concept?

They didn’t come out before he started driving, so why would you expect that to change just because he drove? Checkmate, moran!

I’m mostly thinking how lucky it is they fell out *before* they got on the highway.

I wonder if there are connection points for straps in the bed? I’m guessing not.
ok, I looked it up. It’s got tie-down connection points, this guy has no idea he needs to use them.

After seeing what happened to the bumper of a cybertruck when a guy tried to pull half the load it is rated for, my guess is the tie-downs are secured by an Elmer’s glue stick.

HE’S IN THE PRO PARKING. 😂

Getting laughed at by the contractors, I hope 😉

That’s Trex, plastic decking boards. Slippery stuff.
Yes, I’m pedantic.
Anyway, great stuff! 10/10 no notes.

In conclusion…

A documentary of @elonmusk @tesla @cybertruck pic.twitter.com/g6AfKZsunZ

— CurtVonnegut (@vonnegut_curt) August 31, 2024

Late Night Open Thread: Tales of the JagoffwagonPost + Comments (123)

War for Ukraine Day 922: Russia Continues Its Glide Bomb Bombardment of Kharkiv

by Adam L Silverman|  September 2, 20248:38 pm| 17 Comments

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

Painting by NEIVANMADE. It has a white background an in the center are Soldiers in green doing air defense by firing at incoming Russian missiles in the upper right. The missiles are red and yellow. In the upper left, written in green, is the text: "SAVE THE BRAVEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD!" Below the Soldiers, also written in green, is "SUPPORT FOR KHARKIV"

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Rosie is doing very well, though I think she’d rather it stopped storming. Her next treatment is tomorrow. Thank you all again for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Russia has attacked both Kharkiv city and outside the city in the oblast within the past hour. It is currently 7:45 PM EDT/2;45 AM local time in Ukraine.

Hopefully was air defense taking the drones down https://t.co/FjRQEm2jbL

— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) September 2, 2024

More explosions in Kharkiv ‼️ distant, probably outside of the city.

— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) September 2, 2024

This follows on two glide bomb attacks on Kharkiv earlier today. More on that after the jump.

russia’s brutal terror continues.
Overnight, the invaders launched 35 missiles of various types and 23 UAVs on Ukraine. Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Sumy were under attack.

🇺🇦 air defense shot down 42 aerial targets:
◾️9 Iskander-M/KN-23 ballistic missiles
◾️13 Kh-101 cruise missiles… pic.twitter.com/lFgdawafT0

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) September 2, 2024

russia’s brutal terror continues.
Overnight, the invaders launched 35 missiles of various types and 23 UAVs on Ukraine. Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Sumy were under attack.

🇺🇦 air defense shot down 42 aerial targets:
◾️9 Iskander-M/KN-23 ballistic missiles
◾️13 Kh-101 cruise missiles
◾️20 Shahed UAVs

The world must be strong to finally defeat russian terror. Long-range capabilities are key to protecting the Ukrainian people.

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

show full post on front page

War for Ukraine Day 922: Russia Continues Its Glide Bomb Bombardment of KharkivPost + Comments (17)

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Page 171
  • Page 172
  • Page 173
  • Page 174
  • Page 175
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Page 522
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

On The Road - SkyBluePink -  10 Photos 6
Photo by SkyBluePink (4/15/26)
Donate

Election Resources

Voter Registration Info – Find a State
Check Voter Registration by Address
Election Calendar by State

Targeted Fundraising Info & Links

Recent Comments

  • Chief Oshkosh on Saturday Night Open Thread (Apr 18, 2026 @ 10:19pm)
  • Gin & Tonic on Saturday Night Open Thread (Apr 18, 2026 @ 10:18pm)
  • Timill on Saturday Night Open Thread (Apr 18, 2026 @ 10:17pm)
  • Another Scott on Saturday Night Open Thread (Apr 18, 2026 @ 10:17pm)
  • Jay on Saturday Night Open Thread (Apr 18, 2026 @ 10:16pm)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)

Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Outsmarting Apple iOS 26

Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup

Order Calendar A
Order Calendar B

Social Media

Balloon Juice
WaterGirl
TaMara
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
DougJ NYT Pitchbot
mistermix
Rose Judson (podcast)
Sister Golden Bear

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Privacy Manager

Copyright © 2026 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc