Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Bark louder, little dog.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

It’s possible to be a liberal firebrand without crapping on the party.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

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

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

Books are my comfort food!

Everybody saw this coming.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

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On The Road – BretH – On The Road – BretH – Australia! Melbourne and Sydney Part 4

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BretH

After exploring the areas around the Sydney harbor and the harbor itself we decided to take ferries to some of the surrounding spots for (yet more) hiking and to see some of the beaches. There are so many we couldn’t possibly see them all – we had to skip Bondi Beach and the walks along the point north of the beach to the Hornby Lighthouse. But we knew we wanted to see Manly Beach because the last time my wife came to Australia she stayed there.

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On The Road - BretH - On The Road - BretH - Australia! Melbourne and Sydney Part 4 9
SydneyMay 17, 2024

So our third day in Sydney found us on the 30 minute ferry ride to Manly Beach to hike the North Head, where we knew we would find views of Sydney harbor area from a distance. To warm up we walked along the shore near the Manly ferry port and saw the most unusual thing – a swimming pool built next to the water designed to fill with the incoming tide. Apparently these are found all over the place and provide a place to swim and lounge in the water protected from the surf.

Late Night Open Thread: WEIRD — The GOP (Non) Rebuttal

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To save you a click: Because Trump and Vance, and a great many of their fellow Repubs, are weird!

In the collection below, I’ve deliberately stuck to GOP professionals — no street-level MAGAts competing for each other’s applause, mockery of which could (probably has) filled whole volumes. (Also not included: Roger Stone, who’s made Creepy Weird his entire brand as well as personality.)

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Tuesday Night Open Thread

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Quite a day today politically- if you did not watch the Harris rally in Atlanta, it was a barn burner. The crowd was electric and it felt great to watch. Starting to feel more and more like 2008.

I also popped into the Zoom call tonight, and that went well and it was nice to see some old and new faces. Lots going on and all of it good.

The other day I was thinking about ordering some bulk postcars, maybe a couple thousand, with Harris 2024 on the front and a little blurb somewhere on it that said something to the effect of “Brought to you by members of the online community at https://www.balloon-juice.com,’ and then we could distribute them to the folks here to fill out and send. Do some campaigning and maybe find some new friends in the process? Any thoughts?

I’d also like to get some Harris/Balloon Juice stickers in the shop if for no other reason than I want one on my car. Any thoughts there?

Spent a good chunk of the day on the road heading to the peach orchard to pick up a number of pecks for people around town. The orchard I went to (Triple B Farms) has really, really good peaches and are reliable, so they are my go to when doing runs for lots of people. Farmers markets are hit or miss. I bought myself a watermelon that was so ripe that when I slammed it on the counter it partially cracked and juices burst out.

On a side note, years ago I read or heard someone say “I’ve never seen anyone get fat just eating fruit” and it seems that I apparently took that as a personal challenge.

I think that is all for me. Check in with you in the comments and tomorrow.

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War for Ukraine Day 888: Russian Drones Are Attacking Ukraine While Russian Strategic Aviation & Submarines Are in Position To Launch a Missile Barrage!

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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)

Two quick housekeeping notes. First, Rosie is doing great on her second week off between treatments. Thank you all for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Second, while the new moderating policy is not yet finalized, I will remind everyone that in addition to making racist, bigoted, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, antisemitic, etc types of comments or remarks being unacceptable, wishing people dead is also not acceptable either. I know there’s a lot going on right now and different people are having different buttons pushed right now, but let’s all just dial it back a bit.

Russia has launched a drone attack on Ukraine and Russian strategic aviation is in the air and their ballistic missiles subs are in position to launch an Air-Sea missile attack on Ukrainian targets.

Here’s the map as of 5:40 PM EDT/12:40 AM local time in Ukraine. Just after I saved the image, the alert went up for Vinnytsia Oblast, which is just north of Odesa Oblast.

Air raid alert map of Ukraine as of 5:45 PM EDT on 30 July 2024. All of eastern, central, and southern Ukraine is under air raid alert. To the right of the map fighter jet icons indicate that Russian strategic aviation is attacking. At the bottom of the map, the ship icon indicates that Russian Black Sea fleet missile submarines are in position to fire.

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

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Come Meet with the North Carolina Black Alliance Folks at our Zoom at 7 pm blog time!

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In case you missed it, the NC Black Alliance peeps are coming to zoom with us at 7 pm Eastern tonight.  If you join us, I guarantee that you will come away more excited than you were before.

I have sent out the zoom link to everyone who has RSVP’d to me by email, so if you did RSVP and have not received an email message, please write to me again – I haven’t left you out intentionally!

Also, if you attended any of the Kamala Harris zooms, feel free to tell us about those in the comments.

Apologies for not sharing yet the write-ups from the White Women zoom.  Hopefully tomorrow!

Open thread,

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Tuesday Evening Open Thread: WEIRD!

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Someone on social media explained that there’s Good Weird, which us happy weirdos embrace — and there’s Creepy Weird, which is pretty much the entire GOP platform right now. I have another whole post of Repubs failing to rebut the Creepy Weird label, but I’ll save that for a time when fewer readers are liable to be eating dinner…

(H/t Mousebumples for this thread)

Forgive me if someone else has said this; I’ve been offline for most of the day.

The genius of Harris coming out and calling the GOP out for being weird is that it will have a hydraulic effect on pretty much the entire ecosystem. People always lamented that the media kept treating Republicans …

— National Security Counselors 🕵 (@natlseccnslrs.bsky.social) Jul 28, 2024 at 11:05 PM

like they were just part of the system and should be dealt with in good faith, but it’s not entirely the media’s fault there because the Dem politicos were doing the same damn thing. Political reporters often take their cues about where the Overton window is from the people on the opposite side, …

and basically what goes through their minds (or more likely their editors’ minds) is “if the dems are treating this like just another policy disagreement, then we should too.” So when the Dems come out and say, man, you’re just $%^&ing weird, this isn’t politics as usual, that frees up the …

political media to be less bothsidesy.

Think of it like a trial. A trial is an adversarial process. The judge often won’t come down hard on a lawyer if the opposing lawyer doesn’t ask them to. It’s not their place. So replace “judge” with “media” and “opposing lawyer” with “opposing party” and …
this makes sense. As long as the Dems didn’t treat the Republicans like a bunch of weirdos who don’t deserve to be treated like peers who happen to have different opinions, the media wouldn’t either.

But now that that has changed, I expect you’ll see a lot more reporters follow suit.

And to a degree that explains the total meltdown that this has caused in the GOP. Yes a lot of them are so thin-skinned they’re practically translucent and so they’re reacting from a completely emotional place, but the more intelligent ones see what is coming down the pike & it’s not great, Bob.

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Head Incel/Weirdo/Human Menstrual Tracker App Quits

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Head Incel/Weirdo/Human Menstrual Tracker App Quits

Heritage in disarray, but their spirit will live on:

A leader of Project 2025 is stepping down from his role amid a power struggle over potential government staffing if Donald Trump wins in November.

Paul Dans, the director of the project housed at the Heritage Foundation, “will be departing the team”, according to a statement to the Guardian from Kevin Roberts, the president of Heritage Foundation. Dans is leaving “after pressure from Trump campaign leadership” and an “ongoing power rift over staffing control” for a second Trump administration, Roger Sollenberger, a reporter for the Daily Beast, wrote on X.

That’s the Guardian.  The Post is reporting that Project 2025 is winding down its work, not a big surprise since they already shat out their 900 page manifesto.

Those fucks were really measuring the drapes in the Oval Office, weren’t they?  Fighting over the who’s going to be on Trump’s staff in July is like a bunch of red pills fighting over baby names.  More evidence: Politico just published this story Trump would ‘absolutely’ scrap Biden’s Air Force One colors, adviser says.

Contrast the terrible job Trump’s campaign did in the last few weeks to the last week of the Harris campaign (which is basically Biden’s campaign staff, but working for Kamala).

Edit:  And like clockwork, Trump’s no-good terrible staff comes out with a statement that Project 2025 is dead at the same time that Project 2025 says their work will continue.

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