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Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

When we show up, we win.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

You know he’s going to shit a cat.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

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

We are learning that “working class” means “white” for way too many people.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

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

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

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You are here: Home / Archives for 2024

Archives for 2024

Wow!

by WaterGirl|  August 29, 202412:05 pm| 180 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

This is such a compelling 2 minutes.  It’s so simple, and maybe so powerful for that reason.

Trump lies and then the media just accept those lies. There’s no pushback, no investigative journalism, no holding power to account. Thank you Jack for what you are doing! pic.twitter.com/yl042Vtb1w

— ytruthmatters (@ytruthmatters) August 29, 2024

Are you able to play this video even if you don’t have a twitter account?

Wow!Post + Comments (180)

Open Thread: Taking Back The Narrative One Song At A Time

by TaMara|  August 29, 202410:34 am| 99 Comments

This post is in: Elections 2024, Kamala Harris for President, Open Threads, Politics

How about a bit of music to keep the day going? This was on twitter and by the screams from all the right people, it hit its mark. For those that don’t know, Offerman and his wife, Megan Mullally, were generally seen as favoring Republicans. I don’t know how much of that was true or wishful thinking. But Offerman has made his feelings clear with this fun ditty

I’m not a TikTok person (I’ve tried, but it is too easy to lose a couple of hours for no good reason there) but I hear there are accounts there doing the heavy lifting reaching folks we need for the blue wave. This is one of those accounts – there are hundreds of other accounts lipsyncing to this song, so again, reaching a larger audience and spreading the word.

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Open Thread: Taking Back The Narrative One Song At A TimePost + Comments (99)

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Busy, Busy, Busy…

by Anne Laurie|  August 29, 20248:47 am| 129 Comments

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

Decoy and Shohei with the cutest first pitch you've ever seen. ?? pic.twitter.com/fEoFRxMOH4

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) August 29, 2024

Sigourney Weaver got emotional speaking about Vice President Kamala Harris at a Venice Film Festival press conference. pic.twitter.com/Eq6cwFUBP5

— AP Entertainment (@APEntertainment) August 28, 2024

On the road again with @KamalaHarris in Georgia.

All I have to say is: Let’s roll. pic.twitter.com/K9K0sd0iMd

— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) August 29, 2024

From the Associated Press, “Harris, Walz will sit down for first major television interview of their presidential campaign”:

Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will sit down Thursday for their first major television interview of their presidential campaign as the duo travels in southeast Georgia on a bus tour.

The interview with CNN’s Dana Bash will give Harris a chance to quell criticism that she has eschewed uncontrolled environments, while also giving her a fresh platform to define her campaign and test her political mettle ahead of an upcoming debate with former President Donald Trump set for Sept. 10. But it also carries risk as her team tries to build on momentum from the ticket shakeup following Joe Biden’s exit and last week’s Democratic National Convention.

Joint interviews during an election year are a fixture in politics; Biden and Harris, Trump and Mike Pence, Barack Obama and Biden — all did them at a similar point in the race. The difference is those other candidates had all done solo interviews, too. Harris hasn’t yet done an in-depth interview since she became her party’s standard bearer five weeks ago, though she did sit for several while she was still Biden’s running mate…

The CNN interview, airing at 9 p.m. EDT Thursday, takes place during her two-day bus tour through southeast Georgia campaigning for the critical battleground state, a trip that culminates Thursday with a rally in Savannah. Harris campaign officials believe that in order to win the state over Trump in November, they must make inroads in GOP strongholds across the state…

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Thursday Morning Open Thread: Busy, Busy, Busy…Post + Comments (129)

On The Road – frosty – Farmer’s National Bank of Owatonna, Louis Sullivan. Exterior

by WaterGirl|  August 29, 20245:00 am| 59 Comments

This post is in: frosty's Bank Tour, On The Road, Photo Blogging

frosty

On our way eastbound from North Dakota, we had to plan some stops in Midwestern states. I had a year of Architecture History as an undergrad and fell in love with Louis Sullivan’s work. Remembering that he ended his career designing banks in out-of-the-way small towns across the Midwest, I looked them up and we changed the itinerary to go by a couple of them, including the one in this post.

Louis Sullivan was one of the most famous architects in American history, working in Chicago at the turn of the last century. He was part of the Chicago School, known as the “father of the skyscraper” and a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright. He was one of the first to see that steel-framed buildings could have their own form, and he designed them with a base, shaft, and capital, something that we see so often now that it doesn’t seem revolutionary. From there he took the plain and simple mass elements of the skyscraper and added ornament in iron or terra cotta, which became his trademark.

The Panic of 1893 caused a decline in large commissions. Sullivan himself went into a financial and emotional decline, during which his partnership broke up and Wright left his studio. In his later years he began doing work outside of Chicago and across the Midwest: banks, commercial buildings, and residences. He died alcoholic and bankrupt in 1924.

Between 1908 and 1920 he designed eight banks in what became known as Prairie Style, which he referred to as his “Jewel Boxes”, all of which are still standing. The bank in Owatonna was the first and most elaborate. It came about because the bank’s owner, musician-turned-banker Carl Bennett, wanted a building where farmers would feel comfortable, not a Classical Revival design derived from a Greek temple. He was also looking for a work of art and his search for an architect led him in 1906 to Louis Sullivan. The collaboration of patron and architect produced what many consider the finest small-town bank in America. Architectural historian Tom Martinson calls it one of the greatest buildings in American history, because it is unlike anything else before or since.

On The Road – frosty – Farmer’s National Bank of Owatonna, Louis Sullivan. ExteriorPost + Comments (59)

On The Road - frosty - Farmer's National Bank of Owatonna, Louis Sullivan. Exterior 9
August 18, 2024

The bank and the smaller horizontal office building behind it were both part of Sullivan’s design.

Late Night Open Thread: Stuck in Their Middle-School Lunchroom Drama

by Anne Laurie|  August 29, 20242:49 am| 145 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Readership Capture, Our Failed Media Experiment

10 years ago today Obama dared to wear a tan suit to a press conference….becoming the biggest scandal in presidential history ?? pic.twitter.com/kpyD05CfXY

— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) August 28, 2024

Our Most Visible Media Members all seem to consider ninth grade the pinnacle of their professional development. All of them wanted to be at the Kool Kids Table. Some of them actually were queen bees (Megyn Kelly had a rant on social media today complaining that Kaitlin Collins would never be a real newscaster if she couldn’t learn to smile more). Most of them held tenuous positions on the fringes of the Glorious Chosen as little remoras, alternately sucking up to their “betters” and punching down at the “losers” (just joking, tho!). No dignity whatsoever… barely an idea that ‘dignity’, as a concept, even exists.

Harris must do a solo interview. America needs to know that she can handle being asked about a thing Trump said or tweeted twelve times in a row in a one-on-one context

— The Great El Wokismo (@canderaid) August 28, 2024

2 Questions:

What was the “mainstream, traditional interview” that you saw that convinced you to vote for a presidential candidate?

Which current “mainstream, traditional outlet” would you like to see conduct a presidential interview? https://t.co/DFkTCNt8OG

— Michael Harriot (@michaelharriot) August 28, 2024

We thought the press were bad at their jobs. Now we realize that we just disagree about what their jobs are. https://t.co/vz4DDtxxhF

— Jean-Michel Connard ??? (@torriangray) August 27, 2024

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Late Night Open Thread: Stuck in Their Middle-School Lunchroom DramaPost + Comments (145)

Wednesday Night Open Thread

by WaterGirl|  August 28, 202410:18 pm| 71 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

My family left this morning, then I had a double-vet appointment (Henry and Mr. Bear).  So I don’t have a good handle on what’s going on in the news, except to wonder why my good friend Jack Smith would file a superseding indictment when I am pretty much offline for 2 days.  Harrumph!

Loved this from DougJ.  It may not be sexy, but it’s exceedingly well done.

Tim Walz says his administration serves free lunch to all Minnesota schoolchildren. But the average time of this meal is 11am, meaning that it’s really brunch.

Two Pinnochios.

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) August 25, 2024

Henry and some of his friends.

Open thread.

Wednesday Night Open ThreadPost + Comments (71)

Wednesday Open Thread- Say Hello to Rosie

by John Cole|  August 28, 20249:27 pm| 73 Comments

This post is in: John Cole Presents "This Fucking Old House"

So every one say hello to Rosie (feline edition):

Wednesday Open Thread- Say Hello to Rosie

Apparently the god heard me last night saying I was lucky and could handle a disaster tomorrow and it took about 12 hours for the cat distribution system to set into motion. This morning my sister Devon texted me about her best friend from growing up whom we have both known since we were born, and her friend has a long, long history with mental illness and substance abuse. She currently was going through a psychotic break of some sort, had lost her job, and was homeless living in a patch of woods behind a Lowes about four hours from me in Frederick, Maryland, with a cat. Her friend needed help and wouldn’t go because she had nothing to do with the cat, her father is dead, her mother and one sister have basically written her off, and Devon couldn’t go because she is currently in Salt Lake City on a business trip.

I groaned, took off my workout clothes (I was heading to the pool), gassed up the car and set off for lovely Frederick, Md. Got there, finally found her in the woods, collected up the cat and got it in the car, and then spent 90 minutes listening to her friend sobbing and fighting me (she wanted to come back to Bethany with me and that was NOT happening- she needs professional help), and finally I got her in the car and dropped her off at the hospital after reaching out to the mental health professionals in the area. She refused to go in, so I told her that Devon and I are done with her until she gets help. If she does that, we will be glad to do anything she needs. But for now this is above our pay grade and expertise. I finally just left. My sister informed me that her friend texted her about 20 minutes after I left and said she went into the hospital and checked in. So that is good. And I will keep my word and so will Devon, and we’ll help her pick up the pieces once she has been diagnosed, dried out, and is back on meds and can function again.

Rosie is a very, very sweet cat. At some point in the ride she figured out how to get out of the cat carrier, and climbed up into the front seat with me and sat on my lap for two hours. While I was driving home I called Gerald and he sent Breyana over to cat proof one of the spare bedrooms, put down litter and a food and water bowl, so when I got back I just had to whisk her upstairs. She got a little hissy when she saw Maxwell, who was very interested in her, and Steve looked at her and did a “whatever” and went back to being the chillest cat who ever fucking lived.

I know absolutely nothing about this cat other than that when her friend was more stable a few months ago, the cat was kept in a kennel, so I am reasonably sure it does not have feline leukemia. Regardless, Rosie is currently sequestered in the room, and will stay there until I can get her to the vet and do bloodwork, stool samples, get her chipped, all her shots, and all that stuff in order. Then I will worry about integrating her and trying to find her a forever home and paying off the vet. It’s always something, isn’t it.

At any rate, I feel good the cat is safe, she is in the hospital, and nothing terrible happened to anyone or anything. I was very good friends with her father, who was a gentle, decent man and a political science teacher at a local university for 40 years, but he has since passed. I feel like he would have done the same thing for one of my sisters, so what comes around goes around, right?

***

On the way down I had a ton of time so decided it was time for me to finally give a listen to Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan because my “ignore it and maybe it will go away” gambit did not work and it looks like they are going to be a cultural force for some time, so I better figure out what the kids see in them. I listened to Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess and Sabrina Carpenter’s Emails I Can’t Send and Short and Sweet.

I regret to inform you, dear reader, that I enjoyed them. It’s obviously not designed for me, but they were easy listens and had great lyrics and many of them had really catchy beats. What really caught my eye and, as I noted on twitter, what kinda pissed me off, is that these ladies and Taylor Swift have basically written how to manuals for guys to meet and keep a girl. If you listen to the lyrics, they literally did everything but sit boys down and teach them to sew green flags. When I was kid all the girls I was interested in where listening to was the Cure or the Smiths and let me tell you that was no fucking help to me whatsoever. I mean Hot to Go is pretty self explanatory and a polite way of saying DTF, Dumb and Poetic is telling you not to be a fucking poser and pretend to be something you are not, be real, Please Please Please is telling you “look all my friends think you’re bad news and I am already making excuses for you don’t fuck this up and hurt me and make me look like an asshole,” Lie to Girls is telling you that look I have already lowered my standards to be with you cut the fucking lying and bullshit out and show some respect I’m not fucking stupid.” And on and on and that’s just off the top of my head from one listen.

Beyond that, I can see why they are so popular.

***

I am pooped. I will talk to you all tomorrow.

Wednesday Open Thread- Say Hello to RosiePost + Comments (73)

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