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Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

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

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

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Republicans don’t trust women.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Come on, man.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

As long as McCarthy is Speaker, the House will never be in order.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

It’s a doggy dog world.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

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Tim F

You are here: Home / Archives for Tim F

Tim was the first person invited by John Cole to join him as a writer at Balloon Juice. That was way back in 2005!

Jesus christ I’m old

by Tim F|  January 7, 202211:05 am| 192 Comments

This post is in: Anniversary Week, Balloon Juice, Open Threads

A bit over sixteen years ago a popular right-wing milblogger said a few mildly critical things about the war in Iraq. As you could guess his comments section blew sixteen gaskets, but they gave him a little slack since he was a big name in the right-o-sphere and a founding editor at RedState. He could have taken the hint and dialed it down a notch, but of course being a typical ‘eers fan he told his whole readership and his web-ring of friends and colleagues to shove it up their tail pipe. Then he brought on a raving liberal co-blogger to piss them off all over again.

And like that I went from writing not great diaries at Daily Kos to being the #2 guy on a pretty popular Republican blog. What’s it like to be a socialist writing for people who mostly thought I was Hitler’s grandkid? My second post (after “hi”) wasn’t exactly a fig leaf. Honestly, we all got along fine. It turns out John cultivates an interesting group of readers worth engaging even back then.

Believe me, interesting readers wasn’t something you took for granted. I’m old enough to remember the free-thinking ideals that chat rooms like the Atlantic used to cultivate, but even in 2005 that was mostly seen as quaint and outdated, especially in right-blogs. A place like RedState or or Gateway or Powerline saw (see) themselves more as propaganda amplifiers. Management took a toddlerish pride in deleting anything in the comments that stepped on the day’s message. Of course doing that empowers the true-believingest, knee-jerkingest commenters, and like that every blog became Parler. Honestly I don’t even know what the commenters got out of that, aside from some animalistic thrill in seeing who can me-too the loudest.

I want to emphasize this point because even as a right-wing blogger John stood out for having this old-timey faith that readers can defend their own ideas without management’s help. Liberals like me could drop in, say our piece, and win or lose an argument with the local crowd (I did both). True believers screamed bloody murder of course, but as far as I could tell he thought those guys were insecure and boring anyway. It takes a lot of confidence to run a joint where anyone can say anything that doesn’t cross the red line (racism/sexism/abuse, then as now), and it takes serious balls to listen to those arguments and publicly change your mind.

Since I joined pretty early on, I got to see that slow growing horror when converts from the dark side start to realize that they’re rooting for a party who’d lose a game of horse to the Washington Generals. It is tough to leave the side that’s backed by media megacorps and bottomless funding for comms training, and join people who mean well but bring a banana split to the OK Corral. It was honestly an incredible moment when we discovered the one-secret-trick that powers a surprising amount of the right’s success (call your Reps!), and then it was dispiriting again when the hack got patched by electing a couple swing votes from WV and AZ who sincerely don’t care what constituents think. The lord giveth and taketh away.

The one lasting thing I still feel great about is inviting on a couple of frighteningly smart writers in David and Tom who’ve made this place one of the better informed spots on the internet. These guys are sincerely amazing.

Anhow, I know you all have one really important question.

Jesus christ I'm old

He’s doing ok! Dogs the size of Max don’t chase balls much at twelve years old, but he plays a mean game of tug. Max has a good appetite and most things still work the way they should, except that his hips have gotten pretty weak. So these days the neighborhood knows Max as that big Doberman who still politely checks everyone for treats but he moves just a hair faster than the tectonic plate that Pittsburgh sits on. When the weather allows he still holds down our little patch of lawn grass for as long as the sun shines on it.

Jesus christ I'm old 1

We love him, and he patiently puts up with us.

***Update***

As long as I’m getting sentimental about my big goofball dog, this four sentence open thread might be my favorite thing I’ve ever written.

Jesus christ I’m oldPost + Comments (192)

What we should do right now

by Tim F|  May 18, 20217:09 pm| 21 Comments

This post is in: Organizing & Resistance

Hi everyone, I’m not dead yet. I really want to mobilize effective activism, but there isn’t much to say right now. Nancy is doing good work in the House. The bottleneck to what should be everyone’s number one priority, the election security bill H.R.1, is Joe Manchin. If you live in West Virginia then you need to call his office, just like you should do every day since Joe Biden took office. If you don’t live in West Virginia then I’m sorry to say that you are a passenger on this ride. Please don’t bother calling Manchin’s office, it just wastes your time and annoys the staff. His job is to answer to pepperoni roll-eating Mountaineers fans and only them. It doesn’t really matter how progressive or enlightened your Senator is, and Republicans are singularly useless all the way from Rand Paul to Mitt Romney. If you live in AZ of course you should call Kyrsten Sinema; personally I get the feeling that she won’t hold out if Manchin doesn’t but every bit counts.

On the Republican side, Lisa Murkowski is about the only ray of hope we’ve got. Mitt Romney loathes Trump but he doesn’t have much interest in Democrats succeeding either. I will keep poking Pat Toomey’s office but I think he’s already counting his post-Senate weekly checks from Americans for Prosperity.

Do you have better ideas? Dish! I could use them.

[EDIT]: Here’s a picture of an old dog playing tug with the leash. My discipline habits have gone to hell as we both get older.

What we should do right now

What we should do right nowPost + Comments (21)

Help put a stop to this nonsense

by Tim F|  February 4, 20214:45 pm| 57 Comments

This post is in: Organizing & Resistance

Folks, this proposal to drastically narrow the window of people who’d qualify for bailout checks is terrible. It is bad politics. It is bad policy. It just gives certain legislators a chance to peacock around for a tiny audience of lazy opinion writers who have no concept of policy as a thing that affects people in the real world.

Yes, call your Senators. If you live in West Virginia then call Joe Manchin twice. If you don’t live in West Virginia then please don’t; you’ll just waste time and annoy his staff. Tell them to just give everyone the damn money. The top 1% is by definition just 1% of the population, so it won’t do a thing to the bill’s bottom line to give them an equal share.

Help put a stop to this nonsensePost + Comments (57)

We do what we must because we can

by Tim F|  January 26, 202110:31 am| 45 Comments

This post is in: Organizing & Resistance

It would be great if someone who reads this blog and lives in West Virginia were to call up Joe Manchin’s office and get to know the staff a little. Yes I mean that he needs to hear about impeachment and changing his stance on the filibuster. But also in general, he seems like a (relatively) decent guy who represents a very Trumpy red state, so he has a lot of concerns to balance right now and it would be a good idea if someone could make contact and find out what his folks think we can do to help him do the right thing. His staff are Democrats and even if they’re not all on board with the “Green New Deal”, they all want to expand health insurance, expand collective bargaining rights and a raise the minimum wage to something people can live on. I’d like to know what they think we can do to help firm up the Democratic team and make those things happen.

The same applies to folks like Conor Lamb in PA. Like Manchin, he strikes me as a decent guy trying to both represent his red district and promote core Democratic priorities. If you live in his district, I’d like to hear back about what his people think we can do to help. That’s doubly important since it’s so critical we hold the House in 2022. Obviously Krysten Sinema needs attention too…she strikes me as a bit of a contrarian peacock in the old McCain/Lieberman mold, but that doesn’t mean she is immune to pressure from constituents.

Do you have a conservative Democrat who either needs some encouragement or might be vulnerable in two years? Get in touch with their team and let’s hear back what they think we can do for them.

***

ETA: and of course this comes right after John wrote something along the same lines. Sorry John. Also, call your Senator.

We do what we must because we canPost + Comments (45)

Arizona on my mind

by Tim F|  January 25, 20214:35 pm| 124 Comments

This post is in: Organizing & Resistance

Do you live in AZ? Call Kyrsten Sinema. She seems like a fine person but she may not know Mitch McConnell like Democrats who’ve had the misfortune of working with him know the guy. She could use a reminder that Democrats will get slaughtered if they roll over to McConnell’s endless bad faith obstruction and accomplish nothing in the next two years. He won’t compromise and if you offer him good faith he won’t reciprocate.

Sinema has […] made it clear that she will not go along with her Democratic colleagues. Her office said recently that she is “not open to changing her mind.”

A spokesperson for Sinema told the Post that the senator is “against eliminating the filibuster, and she is not open to changing her mind about eliminating the filibuster.”

This is suicide. If you live in AZ or know someone who does, please ask her office to reconsider.

Meanwhile, if you have a Republican Senator then let them know the party won’t recover until they cut Trump out of it. If that sounds like it contradicts what I just said, well yes, both things can be true at the same time. Pollyannish Charlie Brownism can cut the Democratic party’s achilles tendon before Biden ever gets a chance to govern, and Trumpism can permanently destroy the GOP’s credibility unless they act now to sever it and cauterize the stump. If someone’s going to make a mistake, I’d rather it be them than us.

Arizona on my mindPost + Comments (124)

Open thread

by Tim F|  January 20, 20211:51 pm| 194 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

Mood.

Anything else happening today?

Open threadPost + Comments (194)

My Biggest Enemy Is Me / Pop A 911

by Tim F|  January 14, 20212:39 pm| 200 Comments

This post is in: domestic terrorists

I’ve been pointing this out for a while, but it’s nice to see the DOJ make it official. If your cell phone is turned on then towers are triangulating you constantly. If you brought a cell phone to the capitol riot then it’s time to call a lawyer.

DOJ makes clear that if you had a cell phone on inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, you will get caught. pic.twitter.com/nLXaeG1RpE

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 14, 2021

With so many defendants, you have to figure the odds of several breaking omerta and narcing out their handlers higher up the food chain is pretty good.

My Biggest Enemy Is Me / Pop A 911Post + Comments (200)

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