Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I really should read my own blog.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

That meeting sounds like a shotgun wedding between a shitshow and a clusterfuck.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

White supremacy is terrorism.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Decision time: keep arguing about the last election, or try to win the next one?

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

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Four Directions AZ and NV Matches at 4x – an Extra Angel (6x) for the Next $500 in Matching Donations

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Update at 6:15 pm:

We are back to 4x matching now, with the external match and an angel for each state.

*****

Opportunity knocks!

We have a new Balloon Juice Angel who is willing to add his angel match of $500 so we can complete BOTH of the current angel matches. Thank goodness for impatient people. :-)

So anything you donate up to $50 will turn into 6x the amount you donate.

$50 -> $300  / $35 -> $210  /  $25 -> $150  /  $10 -> 60  /  $5 -> $30

And everything in between!

To complete our current matches, we need $150 donated to AZ and $275 to NV.  The remaining $75 can go to either one.

To count toward the match, let us know about your donation in the comments, or you can drop me an email message if you prefer.  Let me know which state or state in the comments.

ARIZONA

NEVADA

Let’s do this!

Four Directions AZ and NV Matches at 4x – <s>an Extra Angel (6x) for the Next $500 in Matching Donations</s>Post + Comments (38)

Accidentally Like a Raver

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Accidentally Like a Raver

I’ve been writing about my trip to rural America to see the eclipse.   We did see it, by driving at the last minute to a town on the edge of totality, and barely avoiding clouds.  (As you can see, the rightmost picture is almost totally obscured by clouds.)

I’ve been to other eclipses, most recently the annular eclipse on October 14, 2023, and the fun of it for me is to see it with a crowd.  With that in mind, my wife and I booked four days at the Texas Eclipse festival.  It was basically a rave, which we booked in near-total ignorance of what that meant.  It turns out that some promoters took over a 1,300 acre ranch near Burnet, Texas and converted it to a festival grounds.  That conversion involved bulldozing out a number of roads, RV pads, tent sites and parking areas.  They sold almost every ticket, and crowd estimates were around 35,000.

Because it was windy, and because most of the site had been scraped out of the red dirt of the countryside, there was a lot of dust.  The festival grounds were huge, so most of us had a pretty long walk from our campsite to the main festival area — from our campsite, two round trips plus some walking around at the site was recorded by our smart watches 10 miles of walking each.  As far as I’m concerned, the weather from Friday through Sunday was pretty good, daytime highs in the 70’s and low 80’s, and overnight lows in the mid 50’s to low 60’s.  The shows were really well done and near-constant.  I am not a fan of techno/EDM, but there were some presentations from space scientists as well as a couple of bands that were more like jam bands.

Even though I thought that the promoters did about as well as they could have given the circumstances, there was a huge amount of complaining on social media.  These complaints took two forms.  First, for festival goers, there was a bunch of bitching about getting into the venue, the parking process, and the lack of some amenities.  Our experience was that the first day of parking was a disorganized mess, and it took about 3 hours from the gate until we were in our campsite, but after we were settled we found that the portable toilets were cleaned out more-or-less regularly, and that the promised clean water was provided in a number of stations in the campgrounds and in the festival grounds.  Some people also complained that their favorite artist didn’t perform, but there were something like 500 acts booked, and the entertainment was constant.  The second form of complaints came from area residents, who didn’t like the idea of 35,000 people descending on their rural county.  Some of the complaints were pretty nasty, calling the ravers “human garbage” and so forth.

On the day of the eclipse, thunderstorm warnings caused the promoters to cancel the rest of the festival and encourage everyone to get out.  I didn’t have to be told twice: within a half hour of getting the notice, we were on a Texas road heading for the edge of totality, where the weather looked the best.   There were no traffic jams, and we found a place to watch with a few other people in a commercial parking lot in Brady.  People were upset about the cancellation, but I think the promoters did the right thing, and they’re promising some kind of refund. They’ve also pointed out that there were tornado watches and lightning strikes on the festival grounds on Tuesday, which was the planned day for everyone to vacate the festival grounds.

So, if you’ve read this far, I do have a point to make:  the “human garbage” comments by people claiming to be residents of the area were, to me, all too predictable.  There’s just so little tolerance of difference by a lot of these rural folks who are living on a diet of right-wing media.  My experience of this festival was that the people there were some of the kindest, friendliest and peaceful folks I’ve ever met.  Yeah, they smoke pot and take shrooms, and there were a lot of weird costumes (and thong bikinis and pasties worn by the women), but this was mostly just dress up for adults.  I didn’t see a single fight or even a cross word exchanged, and all of the ravers (as distinct from the accidental spectators like me) seemed to really love the music.

Texas Eclipse Festival

In short, I disliked the music and liked the people.  It’s something I’d never do again, but it was an experience worth having.  But I came to this experience without feeling the need to judge or belittle the young people who clearly put a lot of time and effort to get here, and then to dress up.  When your worldview requires you to cast out anyone who looks or acts different, any experience like this is just an excuse to hate “the other”.  And that’s both boring and sad.

Accidentally Like a RaverPost + Comments (102)

Hey Lurkers!

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looking in a large storefront window with reflections in the glass and a sign that says “Come in, We’re Open"

It’s way past time for another thread for all the lurkers out there.  I don’t think we’ve had one for months!

You guys may already know this, but when you post your first comment, it goes into moderation, and sometimes it takes a while for one of us to see it and free your comment so it shows up for everyone.  Once it’s released from moderation, it goes into the comments with the time-stamp for when you first submitted it, so then most people probably never see it.  So it’s not surprising that first comments often don’t get replied to.

So here’s a special open thread where we can keep a particular eye out for first comments that go into moderation.

A few of you who poked your heads up on previous lurker threads have turned into commenters, but don’t let that scare the rest of you away!

I think it’s especially awesome to see lurkers joining in on the Ukraine raffles, meetups, Balloon Juice zooms, fundraising, and even Balloon Juice angels.  We don’t know your names, but you guys rock.

In any case, it’s lurker appreciation day here on Balloon Juice!  Welcome, all.

Totally open thread.

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Things We Wish the Media Would Cover

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I had a thought as I was reading the morning thread.

What if we make a list of stories the mainstream media should be covering?

For instance, I really want to cover Project 2025, but I have not found the time yet to get started.  Every week I move Project 2025 to the next week on my calendar.  If others are interested and concerned, we could do a whole series on the key parts of Project 2025.  Many hands make light work – chime in if you are horrified by what’s in the plan and you’d be willing to do some research and cover a particular chunk in a guest post.

Balloon Juice isn’t a big wave like the “we love Hiter, take 2” NYT, but we’re not salt in the ocean, either.

Open thread.

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Sunday Morning Open Thread: Same As It Ever Was

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As I understand it, Sunday strip comics are produced some weeks in advance, but a good political artist has the gift of timing…
Sunday Morning Open Thread: Same As It Ever Was
Sunday Morning Open Thread: Same As It Ever Was 1

(Doonesbury via GoComics.com)

 
Speaking of forty-year-old comedic stylings… In Japan, some fear the demise of vintage rakugo, and yet America’s SNL has retained a very similar structure since Lorne Michael was a fresh young creative:

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War for Ukraine Day 780: The World Burns

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As I start tonight’s post, 6:17 PM EDT, only Kharkiv is under air raid alert and it has been under attack for the past two hours.

And Israel, Israel is under air raid alert too.

I’m going to keep the focus tonight on Ukraine, because, while Iran is not blameless in its own and its proxies actions against Israel, quite frankly, the Israelis, and specifically Bibi, have done this to themselves with their attack on the Quds Force commander in Damascus. I don’t want anyone else in Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza to get hurt, and there is a real risk of that when debris comes down as Iran has launched several hundred drones and an unknown number of cruise missiles. These are expected to target Israeli military facilities in the Golan and Negev in the early morning hours, not Israeli civilians and civilian infrastructure. This is the same aerial bombardment strategy of using drones to overwhelm air defense so the missiles can get through that we are used to seeing the Russians use against the Ukrainians.

We are where we are because, as Avraham Shalom, the head of the Shin Bet in the early to mid 80s, stated in regard to Israeli leadership in The Gatekeepers documentary: ayn strategik, raq taktik. No strategy, only tactics. I will, however, start with a couple of items pertaining to what is going on between Israel and Iran.

First, a more recent former head of Shin Bet:

https://twitter.com/DanArbell/status/1779197825940701576

And two assessments from Eran Etzion, the former deputy director of Israel’s equivalent to the US National Security Council.

https://twitter.com/SinaToossi/status/1779129515475665209

⭕️Crucial points from Eran Etzion, former deputy head of the National Security Council in the Israeli Prime Minister’s office:

🛑The elimination of the Iranian general in Damascus was one of two things – either severe strategic negligence that needs to be investigated, or a deliberate attempt to draw Iran into the conflict, in absolute contradiction to the demands of the USA & its interests. Anyone involved in this decision needs to provide explanations.

🛑Israel is deep in the most severe crisis in its history, with broken national decision-making mechanisms, led by a man who has lost his judgment and acts based on foreign considerations, & without control and oversight mechanisms over the executive authority.

🛑In my cautious estimate, what is actually happening is coordination between the USA and Iran and containment of the Iranian response. If the coordination succeeds, the USA will prevent an Israeli response. And if the coordination fails, the USA will be in a difficult dilemma.
_

https://twitter.com/SinaToossi/status/1779262565077405699

Eran Etzion, former deputy head of the National Security Council in the Israeli Prime Minister’s office:

“At this stage, it is too early to assess what exactly Iran is trying to achieve with its massive and unprecedented retaliatory operation against Israel.

However, it seems that Iran does not intend to enter into a full-scale war. This is also clearly evident from the wording of the American response. Both countries are trying to contain the incident. Arab states are also walking a tightrope. They will intercept Iranian armaments that enter their territory and will not approve the passage of Israeli aircraft.

Tomorrow morning, when we will probably be after the Iranian attack, a damage assessment will be conducted. As long as the damages are limited (and we are not entering a more precise resolution at the moment), the USA will likely demand Israel not to respond, or to respond in a very limited way.

And so it is right that Israel should act. The main reason is the fact that Israel does not have a functioning government, led by a person who is unfit, and that the top ranks of the IDF are tainted by the terrible failure of 10/7.

This government must not drag Israel into a regional war, and we are already a step from there. In hopes that the event can be closed quickly, we must return to the negotiating table with Hamas, quickly agree on a hostage deal in exchange for a ceasefire, and go to snap elections.

Only a competent government, with new military leadership, will be worthy of the trust of the citizens of Israel, and will be able to start planning and implementing a comprehensive strategy against regional threats.

This will be done in full and close coordination with the USA, and with the relevant regional countries.”

Iran’s official statement:

https://twitter.com/Iran_UN/status/1779269993043022053

Bibi is hold up in a built to spec nuclear bunker under the home of an Israeli-American billionaire in Jerusalem where he and his wife Sara have been hiding from the protestors every night.

https://twitter.com/NTarnopolsky/status/1779205175745429878

Says it all really.

Bibi will, of course, do the stupidest thing possible in response because he needs to expand his war. The war against Hamas in Gaza is a failure. Israel has not achieved a single one of its strategic objectives because it never actually developed a theater campaign plan to do so. Just a tactical response. On the 8th of October 2023, Israel’s war cabinet voted to go to war with Hezbullah in Lebanon. President Biden put a stop to that, though Israel has been trading missile strikes both with Hezbullah in Lebanon and with other Iranian proxies in Syria. Those tit for tat strikes have led Israelis living in the north to flee. At the same time the extremist ultra-nationalist and ultra-devout settlers in the West Bank are fighting their own low intensity war against the Palestinians there. They are being egged on by convicted terrorist and Minister of National Security ben-Gvir and Minister of the Treasury Smotrich. Bibi needs a wider regional war even though he can’t even win the ones he’s currently waging.

Again, I DO NOT want to see any innocent Israelis, Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank, or even Iranians who live under their theocratic tyrants, injured as a result of this strategic stupidity. However, as long as Bibi and his extremist coalition are in charge, Israel needs to be treated by the US as a hostile foreign power. It won’t be, but it should be.

Iran’s retaliatory strike on Israel will also negatively affect Ukraine:

https://twitter.com/maria_avdv/status/1779249781048516939

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. It is a bit of good news. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

show full post on front page

War for Ukraine Day 780: The World BurnsPost + Comments (83)