Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

The willow is too close to the house.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Not all heroes wear capes.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

This really is a full service blog.

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

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

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

You are here: Home / Archives for Libby Spencer

Libby Spencer wrote for Balloon Juice from 2011-12.

"Well, it’s my turn to fill in for Doug, and no, I have no idea why he and John so kindly gave me the keys to the place either."

Libby Spencer

Every time we say goodbye

by | 70 Comments

This post is in: ,

DougJ is back so I’ll be on my way. Thanks to Doug for kindly inviting me to sit in and to everyone for the hospitality and the conversations. I had way more fun here in the last couple of weeks than I probably deserve.

Of course, this isn’t really goodbye for me. More of a farewell till we meet again. I’ll be cruising through your intertoobz, lurking in your comment threads, as always. Also blogging daily at The Detroit News and at my little hideaway where I say the stuff I don’t dare say out loud anywhere else, The Impolitic.

Oh, and I tweet. If you decide to follow me, tweet me to let me know. Code word — green balloons.

And one last thing. If anybody is wondering what happened to that kitten, turns out she was taken in by a neighbor and is happily enjoying the attention of an adoring teenager. So, anybody need two dozen cans of cat food?

Every time we say goodbyePost + Comments (70)

Time waits for no one

by | 49 Comments

This post is in: ,

Just found out a couple of days ago that my favorite aunt died. She was the quintessential eccentric artist. Her entire life was a performance piece. Her real name was Emily. She ran away from home at a fairly young age and changed her name to Stania. Because she thought that more exotic and better suited to an artist.

She was the black sheep of her generation in the family, just as I am of mine. I didn’t know her well. She didn’t get along with my mother. She rarely lived nearby. But we bonded when I spent a couple of weeks in SoCal with her in the early 90s.

I recognized her immediately when I got off the plane. As she did me. The very first thing she said to me after at least 20 years between visits was, “Do you smoke pot?”

Every morning for the next two weeks we had breakfast on her covered deck with the incredible view. It was so gigantic, she created three furnished rooms with living walls of tropical plants. And aquariums. So many fish. She would make really good coffee and roll herself a big fat doob. And we would sit in the breakfast nook, surrounded by banana trees, and talk about the future and the past.

In the afternoons she would show me her artworks. She was a talented artist who worked brilliantly in any medium. She was fearless. Relentlessly creative. Charmingly quirky. Hadn’t seen her since, but we had a psychic connection. For no apparent reason I was thinking about her on the night she died.

Even though I rarely saw her, I’m really going to miss sharing this earthly realm with her. RIP Aunt Stania.

Time waits for no onePost + Comments (49)

Why I’m still a semi-Luddite

by | 142 Comments

This post is in: , ,

I’m not against technology. Appreciate many of the benefits but I’ve never downloaded an app and I don’t sign up for the new greatest thing in sharing information because of cautionary tales like this: How Mat Honan was hacked — hard.

Here’s what happened:

At 4:50 PM, someone got into my iCloud account, reset the password and sent the confirmation message about the reset to the trash. My password was a 7 digit alphanumeric that I didn’t use elsewhere. When I set it up, years and years ago, that seemed pretty secure at the time. But it’s not. Especially given that I’ve been using it for, well, years and years. My guess is they used brute force to get the password (see update) and then reset it to do the damage to my devices.

The backup email address on my Gmail account is that same .mac email address. At 4:52 PM, they sent a Gmail password recovery email to the .mac account. Two minutes later, an email arrived notifying me that my Google Account password had changed.

At 5:00 PM, they remote wiped my iPhone

At 5:01 PM, they remote wiped my iPad

At 5:05, they remote wiped my MacBook Air.

A few minutes after that, they took over my Twitter. Because, a long time ago, I had linked my Twitter to Gizmodo’s they were then able to gain entry to that as well.

New tech is great, until it isn’t. Catnip for hackers who live to find the latest exploit. Read the whole story. It’s tragic. Days later and he’s still dealing with it. Probably won’t be able to retrieve everything he’s lost.

Why I’m still a semi-LudditePost + Comments (142)

Let them eat their own damn cake

by | 67 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

In case there was any doubt the Republican Party is run by fools who never matured past 13 years of age:

The Republican National Committee (RNC) sent the Democratic National Committee (DNC) a birthday cake on Friday,

The cake read “you didn’t bake this” over a picture of President Obama. Text written in icing reads, “Happy birthday, Mr. President.” The cake marks the occasion of the president’s birthday, which is Saturday, with a play on the “you didn’t build that” controversy.

As always, the GOPers have nothing real to run on so they’re reduced to juvenile stunts. I’m sure the 27%ers found it hilarious. High fives all around. But I rather liked the Dems response:

[T]he Democrats sent the cake back.

“This is typical of Mitt Romney’s approach to the middle class,” DNC spokeswoman Melanie Roussell told The Hill. “He wants to ‘Let them eat cake!’ while robbing them blind. We sent the cake back to the RNC, along with a copy of the Tax Center’s report on Mitt Romney’s tax plan.”

In any event today is President Obama’s birthday. Wishing him a grand celebration and many blessings on his way to the next one.

Let them eat their own damn cakePost + Comments (67)

“I mean it is Vermont. No, nobody saw it happen”

by | 41 Comments

This post is in: , ,

This story is awful on so many levels. Let me clear. I don’t approve of vandalism and I’m sincerely grateful no one got hurt. But when I read this line, I couldn’t stop laughing.

With their vehicles crushed, “We had nothing to pursue him with,” said Chief Deputy Philip Brooks.

Reading the details did not dampen my mirth. All I could picture was a Dukes of Hazard episode. Thinking the perp may have seen one too many reruns.

“I mean it is Vermont. No, nobody saw it happen”Post + Comments (41)

And we shall know him by his advisors

by | 60 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Maybe it’s just me, but I found this little noticed detail about Rmoney’s Magic Tax Plan amusing.

This week the Romney campaign was knocked on its heels by a study which suggested that Romney’s tax plan would — in addition to giving a windfall to the wealthiest Americans — increase taxes on 95% of Americans. So the guy who’s running for President to turn back President Obama’s supposedly high-taxing and deficit creating ways would actually raise taxes on virtually everyone and also explode the deficit.

But, wait, there’s more!

[J]ust look who the campaign is putting forward as the expert on the Romney Economic Boom. I’m sort of surprised no one has pointing this out. It’s none other than Kevin Hassett.

Who’s Kevin Hassett? Well, he’s none other than the coauthor of the spectacularly boomtime late 90s bestseller Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market. As TPM Reader WM points out, not only was the book amazingly wrong and basically assumed the tech boom was permanent, the whole concept was based on the idea that stocks should be valued on a “formula that double-counted earnings and dividends. A true classic in wingnut economics.”

Don’t really follow economists much beyond Atrios myself, but I assume this means he’s a well regarded and often quoted expert among the far right punderati.

And we shall know him by his advisorsPost + Comments (60)

Wonder if that’s her real name

by | 107 Comments

This post is in: ,

This is the most amusing thing I’ve seen all morning. “Adult” movie star Jenna Jameson endorsed Romney.

“I’m very looking forward to a Republican being back in office,” Jameson said while sipping champagne in a VIP room at Gold Club in the city’s South of Market neighborhood. “When you’re rich, you want a Republican in office.”

I wonder if she knows the Mittster pledged to crack down on the evil scourge of the carnal arts. If he succeeds, maybe she won’t be so rich anymore.

Wonder if that’s her real namePost + Comments (107)