It all comes down to this. Does it get any better than game 7 between two long-suffering, scrappy-ass teams? Totally neutral open thread for the baseball event!
Florida woman, still rocking a punk rock ethos in the 2020s, which is kind of sad. Betty Cracker has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2012.
Now Come the Days of Dorito…
…May they be blessed!
Chickens are like people in that they are constantly angling for power. Ours is a rooster-less flock, but there’s a boss hen and a scapegoat. The former role is transient, whereas the latter appears to be permanent. Boss hens are evidently deposed by coalition.
By my reckoning, we’re on our third boss hen since the formation of the flock: Joan Jett, the largest black hen pictured above, was recently deposed by Dorito, the orange hen. Joan Jett rose to power by deposing Big Foot, not pictured.
Also, it turns out the chickens DO like bananas. Someone had asked about that. Now you know.
Open thread!
ETA: My hubby and I are thinking about moving at some point in the future, and I’m not looking forward to moving the chickens. Maybe we’ll just put “chickens convey to new owner” in the listing? Nah. But I’m not sure how we’ll move them. We have a large dog kennel that we were going to use to round them up when a hurricane threatened, but thank dog we didn’t have to do it. I guess we’ll move them in that. It’ll be fun! Not.
World Series Game 6 Open Thread
Completely neutral thread for discussion of the current baseball event.
I’ll take partisan hackery for $500, Alex
Via valued commenter Conster, an excerpt of a CNBC story posted an hour ago:
FBI Director James Comey argued privately that it was too close to Election Day for the United States government to name Russia as meddling in the U.S. election and ultimately ensured that the FBI’s name was not on the document that the U.S. government put out, a former FBI official tells CNBC.
The official said some government insiders are perplexed as to why Comey would have election timing concerns with the Russian disclosure but not with the Huma Abedin email discovery disclosure he made Friday.
Let’s take a step back and assess. In case #1, nothing is likely to come of the emails on Huma Abedin’s laptop, unless you believe Hillary sent Huma an email that says, “Please inform our Muslim Brotherhood comrades that Ambassador Stevens will be in Benghazi on 9/11. Allahu Akbar!”
In case #2, U.S. government officials, including the FBI, have concluded that a hostile foreign government is trying to swing the U.S. election toward Putin fan Donald Trump. Trump is notoriously vague on policy and had almost zero input on the GOP platform except to check off Russian wishlist items like disrupting the NATO alliance. That happened during the tenure of his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was subsequently forced to resign after his ties to Putin came to light.
But Comey decided a probable nothingburger of a development in case #1 is important enough to toss a monkey wrench into a national election in the final weeks, and he didn’t want to sully the Bureau’s integrity by attaching its sacred name to statements about #2 so close to the election.
Comey is either willfully injecting himself into the presidential race, too chickenshit to stand up to partisan dickheads like Jason Chaffetz and rogue agents who allegedly threatened to leak investigation details or lacks the judgment to comprehend the effect of his actions. Whether through partisan hackery, cravenness or naiveté, he’s not fit to lead the FBI.
I’ll take partisan hackery for $500, AlexPost + Comments (215)
Love and Kindness: Eight Days Out
Eight days to go until Election Day. Even if you’re confident about Clinton’s prospects (as I am), this is a time of jangled nerves because of the enormous stakes, and it’s human nature to be testy in trying times. Here’s a photo of a lovely blue heron submitted by valued Balloon Juice reader “cope” to remind us not to get our feathers too ruffled:
At various times during the current campaign — and indeed throughout her career in public life — Hillary Clinton has returned to the theme of love and kindness. We could all use a little more of that in our lives, especially now.
To me, love and kindness are among the core animating principles that drive me to identify as a liberal. I believe we should do more to help each other out.
This has been the ugliest election season any of us have ever seen. I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets worse over the next week and on into the post-election period. Some unbelievably malevolent forces have been unleashed, and we all have our part to play in pushing them back.
But maybe this heron from cope can help us all cope in the coming days by reminding us that there’s still so much beauty in the world. Or not. Your choice. Open thread!
World Series Game Five (Updated)
Open thread for the baseball event!
ETA: Also Sunday Night Football, Iggles vs. Cowboys.
World Series Open Thread
So, game three. In keeping with this week’s tradition, this post is a 100% neutral open thread regarding the baseball event. ⚾️ May the best team win!