Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. don’t touch it.”

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

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

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Democrats have delivered the Square Deal, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and now… the Big Joe Biden Deal.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

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

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

In after Baud. Damn.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

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Known as Jewish Steel on Balloon Juicel, Alex Smith wrote at Balloon Juice in 2018.

Jewish Steel

Loving You Both Is Breaking All the Rules

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I think some of you nerds like science fiction. I do too. Let me weave a dystopian tapestry before your wondering eyes and you can tell me what you think.

The year is 2020. There are now flying cars and cheeky robot companions. You have neither of these things. You have a slightly fancier phone and a couple of new shirts.

Your state’s primary has been pushed to the end of the season and its outcome will be pivotal. Democratic primary voters have said they will not go to Cochella. They will not go to Bonaroo. They won’t even go to Lollapalooza. The voters in the other 49 states have proclaimed that they want Paul Revere and the Raiders or The American Breed. This tortured analogy is trying to tell you they want Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders.

Let’s say that Joe has stayed his course  as the WWWC (Wooer of the White Working Class) candidate. Bernie has staked out the leftmost pragmatic position on all of your favorites: Healthcare, education, minimum wage, full employment.

And there you are, in the voting booth. Between Scylla and Charybdis. For whom do you pull the lever?

While you muse on this bummer episode of The Twilight Zone, please observe what I have in my other hand: It’s the fund that’s split between all eventual Democratic nominees in House districts currently held by Republicans.

Goal Thermometer

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I Don’t Care If It Rains or Freezes

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Who is your favorite Jesus? No, I don’t mean who is your favorite Bible Jesus. That’s obvious. It’s Jesus busting heads at the temple, doing what any good action hero does when he discovers a den of thieves in his father’s house. Then later he says, “Ah’ll be back.”

I mean, who is your favorite film Jesus? Mine is Willem Dafoe. You gotta like a Jesus with a flat Midwestern accent, the kind of Jesus who, if you got turned around in Beloit, can get you back on 90/94 and on your way to see the Tommy Bartlett Water Show.

Gahd loves me. I know he does. I wahnt him to stahp.

I really liked The Last Temptation of Christ (follow me now). It’s right up there with Jim Crace’s book Quarantine and Monty Python’s Life of Brian in its depiction of the powerful alienness of Roman-occupied Judea. If their literature and customs are anything to go by, that world and those people were very different from us. The idea that whole continents would become so preoccupied with the mutterings and incantations of this little tribe of desert people that it would form the bedrock of societies sounds like science fiction. Trying to get into their heads of the ancients, even if you’re not related to them, is a fun exercise.

Despite the fact that it is a very eighties-sounding album, full of whooshy synthesizers, I liked the soundtrack to the film by Peter Gabriel, Passion (getting closer). And even more still than the soundtrack (almost there), I loved the music that was the inspiration for the soundtrack, which is collected in an album called Passion – Sources (arrival!). It was a daily listen for me when it came out in 1989 and it still holds up. World music was, I recall, at its zenith in popularity at the time and seemed to come in two flavors: soporific wind-chime music to calm jangled hippie nerves or traditional songs that actually rocked. The Passion – Sources collection is all rockers. The music sounds untamed and a little dangerous. The YouTube collection below omits a Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan song. Be sure to listen to that one too if you are inclined. It’s a jam.

Now that the sermon is over, it’s time to pass the plate. Here fund that’s split between all eventual Democratic nominees in House districts currently held by Republicans.

Goal Thermometer

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Do You Need Anybody?

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My job is such that sometimes I can be cleaning one damn thing or another from the moment I awake until I collapse into bed. Today is one of those days.

I watched half of that Joe Cocker doc on Netflix last night. It was pretty good! The post title is supposed to invoke the cri de coeur that follows this line. Some further research has lead me to this album which I’ve never heard before and am now sampling as I scrub this house clean. So far so good! Classic Rock Values!

Speaking of cleaning, we can clean up congress this fall with a little elbow grease, some love, and whole heap o’ money. And so I present fund the that’s split between all eventual Democratic nominees in House districts currently held by Republicans.

Goal Thermometer

ETA: Down in the comments Thoughtful David having the thoughts:

I have some suggestions for what you can also do, besides giving money, to help Democrats get elected: get involved with your local Democratic Committee. If you live in a county with, say, <100,000 people, the local Dem Committee is probably desperate and begging for your help.
I’m not talking about just things like making phone calls or writing postcards. If you have accounting skills, they probably need a treasurer or assistant treasurer. If you’re good at organizing events, they’ll need help with that too. Manage email lists. Do data entry. If you’re a good communicator, help with the communication strategy. Write copy. Be the web/Facebook/Twitter/Instagram master. Manage the online events calendar.
No, the pay isn’t great (=$0). But this is the kind of thing that’s needed, and sometimes needed desperately.
You can volunteer to help with this kind of stuff for candidates, too. Town, county, state, or federal.
And the best part: they’re all decent people. No deplorables.

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We’re Born Again, There’s New Grass on the Field.

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Sparse posting for me, America’s Only Blue Collar Blogger. Tax season, filthy weather, single dog-parenting (not single dog parenting, if only!) Things are coming back under control slowly.

But coming up quickly is the end of the theoretical baseball season and beginning of the games they play out here in the sloppy, unpredictable, real world.  Now we run our WAR, FIP, wOBA , and triple slash lines out onto the field and see how they do. Please give me your bold baseball predictions for the 2018 season. Or any other kind of prediction if you are feeling frisky.

While you are here, why not step up to the plate (sorry, irresistible) and square up this fund that’s split between all eventual Democratic nominees in House districts currently held by Republican.

Goal Thermometer

And a quick reminder that we would love to hear the story of your congressional district. Send me your stories and, if selected, we will front-page it and include fundraising for nominees: [email protected]. What are you waiting for? Unleash the power of Balloon Juice fundraising!

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I’ll Take You Down The Only Road I’ve Ever Been Down

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Tuesday was primary day here in the Land of Lincoln, and it was bittersweet. Our gubernatorial favorite took our county (hooray!), but only secured one other and it wasn’t the one that Chicago is in. Dan Lipinski squeaked into the 3rd district too, as I’m sure many of you saw. Locals tell me that he won’t survive 2020, so that’s good.

Tuesday was also my wife’s debut as a campaign manager for a friend who ran for a seat on the county board. It was a surprisingly exciting campaign. Our candidate was running against the incumbentiest incumbent in all of Illinois. The longest-tenured county board politician in the state, he had served for 45 years. There were all kinds of twists and turns in this campaign, including a ratfucking fake flyer that was circulated as if it were coming from our candidate! Whaaat? Yes. This might sound absurd for what is probably the lowest rung on the ladder of elected office. But our candidate, an outspoken, tall woman who will occasionally dye her hair a bright color, is a lightning rod for the local RWNJs.

Our candidate ended up taking 71% of the vote. (Man down! Somebody call Jerry Orbach because there has been a homicide!) Don’t waste any time feeling bad for the loser. He called around to his Republican friends and pressed them for endorsements, including the Republican county sheriff and a fellow board member who said that he didn’t think “community activists” had any place on the county board. Uh-huh. So, thank you for your service and enjoy your retirement, pal.

Some of you have expressed an interest in hearing about other races in other places. I have that interest too. To that end, I have set up an email address and encourage any and all of you to send the story of your local political scene. If selected, we will front-page it and include fundraising for congressional nominees. The Chicago sports media have coined the term “out-of-town stupid.” It’s an exculpatory expression usually applied to members of the media from elsewhere who only know the surface story and none of the context. (When the Bulls had Ben Gordon playing at the shooting guard position, the national media take was that the Bulls had finally found a Jordanesque player who could fill up the basket and pour in 30 on any given night. But locals knew that he couldn’t guard a folding chair and was as much of a liability on the court as a benefit. You can’t know that from looking at a couple of box scores. It’s not your fault if you don’t know this. You’re just out-of-town stupid.)

So help the rest of us not be out-of-town-stupid about what’s going on in your neighborhood. Here’s the address: [email protected]

I was reminded that I once said to my wife, “When the money starts flowing, you’ve got to keep milking that money monkey.” She asked me never to use that expression again and once we hit 50K, I vow to you, I will. This is the fund that’s split between all eventual
Democratic nominees in House districts currently held by Republicans.

Goal Thermometer

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Begging Down Upon His Bended Knee

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So, now it’s Sir Ringo. Do you think John would have relented in his republicanism and knelt for a knighthood? I think he might have kept the faith, but he was a pretty flaky dude.

I can think of some 200 odd princelings who need to be stripped of their title. And this here fund that’s split between all eventual Democratic nominees in House districts currently held by Republicans is just the man for the job.

Goal Thermometer

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Troubled in Mind

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Uh oh.

My family, my people, have all been on the Biss train for about a year. They have poured blood, sweat, toil, and tears (and money!) into his campaign. I put it to a friend, “If Biss really has no chance against Pritzker, which this poll does not show conclusively but certainly suggests, and we believe Pritzker is the worst of the viable candidates, are we not obliged to vote strategically for Kennedy? Are we no better than Greens or DSA dead-enders if we vote with our hearts rather than our brains?”

Are we?

Thankfully, I don’t have to make this choice about every primary out there and neither does the fund that’s split between all eventual Democratic nominees in House districts currently held by Republicans. We can give now let Jesus take the reins.

Goal Thermometer

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