Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

We’re not going back!

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

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

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

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

Books are my comfort food!

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

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

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

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

Consistently wrong since 2002

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

Optimism opens the door to great things.

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First Posts

Greetings, Juicers

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Possibly due to a clerical error, I was invited to become part of the fantastic Balloon Juice team. It’s a bit like being the obscure governor of a low-population state who is suddenly thrust into the national spotlight, only hopefully less dumb, evil and screechy.

I know some of you from Rumproast, where I’ve been posting for a few years now, and from my occasional forays into the comments here at Balloon Juice. Pets? I got ‘em — Daisy (fawn) and Patsy (brindle):

[Do not adjust your screen settings; the dog on the right is a rare tailed boxer]

A word about my internet handle: Although I am a white woman from rural Florida, I didn’t choose it to convey that. It’s a nickname my husband (an Upstate New Yorker) gave me because of my down-home cooking.

If I had it to do over again, I’d probably choose something a little less fraught, but what’s done is done.

Anyhoo, hello. And please feel free to treat this as an open thread.

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Greetings, All

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Hello Balloon Juice (cue Robin Williams.)

It is a thrill to be here; this is the blog that has kept me as close to sane as I can hope for for the last several years, and I think I’m going to need all I can get of the front pagers and the community to make it through what seems to be bearing down on us.

So, first, of course, my thanks to John Cole, who for all his professed misanthropy, has managed to create such a fine village here, and to whom I’m deeply indebted for the keys.  Also a shout out to Tim F. – almost the first reader of my home site, The Inverse Square Blog, whose support early and late for my writing there I am very grateful. And also, too, to y’all who gave me and Angry Black Lady such an enthusiastic welcome last night.

I’ve got my first real post ready to go, and it will come up  immediately after this. (As predicted in last night’s comment thread, I’m just holding ABL’s coat on that one, but that’s not a bad place to start, not at all.)

But just so you know a bit of where I come from, here’s the quick background: Age, 52 (unpossible, but there it is), married, one kid, living in or around Boston, proud servant to one feline overlord, Tikka, aka Kitten Tikka Masala.

We picked up Tikka at the Animal Rescue League, aged about 12 weeks, and a vet friend of ours thinks he was seriously feral for those first months. In any event, if he doesn’t like your looks he’ll attempt field surgery on any extremity in reach.

You have been warned.

He’s the perfect cat to me, however, except in his expectation of regular 4:30 a.m. feedings.

My day job has me teaching science writing at MIT.  It should go without saying, but in case it doesn’t, any views I express here are mine alone, and can’t be blamed on anyone else over at 77 Mass. Ave, nor on the Institute itself.

As for what I’ve actually done/do with my time – I’ve spent the better part of three decades variously committing journalism, writing books and making documentary television, mostly about science, its history and its context.

Oh – and I’m as a close to an obligate liberal as you can be: actually born between Telegraph and College Avenues in the People’s Republic of Berkley, in whose public schools I was educated through  high school (go Yellow Jackets!), from whence I passed to a series of other towns in which no real Americans could possibly live.  If anyone is auditioning for the role of sane conservative around here, it ain’t me.

Again, thanks for having me here, John and all and sundry – and I’m looking forward to the usual Balloon Juice full and frank exchanges of views.

And last:  Angry Black Lady’s Macallan 18 is not safe from me.  But I have not put the crayon line to mark the level of my Dalmore 15, so turn and turn about’s fair play.

(Same plea as ABL here too:  still getting used to the tags and all that.  Corrections and guidance always welcome.)

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Rahm Touched Me Here

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Thanks to John and my friend DougJ, I’m going to be posting my barely literate musings here.  I’ll write a little more about myself in a later post, but I want to start with one of the strangest things I’ve heard in, well, perhaps forever.

Eric Massa, my Congressman for about 12 more hours, had his Dick Nixon 1962 moment yesterday on a radio show he co-hosts on Sundays (audio here). Highlights:

  • House leadership inspired one of his aides to make an ethics complaint so they could get him to resign, all because they needed to lower the bar to get HCR passed by one vote (Massa’s resignation makes the number needed to pass 216 instead of 217).
  • Rumors that he’s teh gay in the Navy are all misunderstandings of an incident where Massa walked in on a crewmate masturbating in his bunk.
  • Steny Hoyer lied about Massa’s ethics investigation.
  • A naked Rahm Emanuel confronted Massa in the showers of the House gym, and Massa and he also had a loud, expletive-filled argument over the phone about his “No” vote on HCR.

The incident that Massa believes sparked the investigation happened at a wedding reception for one of his staff members. When being razzed about possibly banging one of the bridesmaids he had just danced with, Massa “tousled the hair” of one of his male staffers and said “What I really ought to be doing is fucking you.”

It’s a strange end to a promising career, but those of us who have been watching him over the years always knew he had something like this in him.

Update: Just to be clear, by “always had something like this in him”, I meant a crazypants rant, not the harassment stuff.

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Reading Recommendation (Not Political)

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Because there are a number of Terry Pratchett fans here, and some suspense /mystery readers as well, I would like to recommend Castle Freeman Jr.’s novel ALL THAT I HAVE.  It’s a little book, only 165 pages, because that’s exactly enough pages to tell the story (stories) it wants to tell.  Imagine Sam Vimes as a Vermont sheriff, responsible for 17 towns in a mostly-depopulated corner of a thinly-settled state — or maybe the son of Captain Vimes and Esme Weatherwax, serving and protecting Lancre and a double-handful of similar hamlets in his own remote corner of the Ramtops.

Sheriff Lucian Wing (as he’s known in this corner of the metaverse) has to deal with a bunch of very dangerous people From Away, who are looking for something the local bad boy may have taken from them, while dealing with various domestic complications caused by the fact that very few people can be content with exactly what they’ve got.   This doesn’t sound humorous, but (as told in Sheriff Wing’s dry voice) it’s very funny.  And it doesn’t sound tragic, although many of Wing’s anecdotes concern all the sorrows of the human condition.  It’s one of those rare books you read quickly, because you can’t wait to see how it comes out, and then go back and start re-reading immediately, because you’re afraid you might have missed something the first time through.

I think I picked it up on a recommendation from a Boston Globe review, comparing ALL THAT I HAVE to one of Donald Westlake’s novels.  Which is a pretty good comparison, if you can imagine one of Parker’s plots narrated by Dortmunder.  It’s available through Amazon, as are a couple more novels and some essays by Castle Freeman Jr., which I am already starting to acquire.

(Late-night test post, not related to anything in particular, just to see if I can get this thing off the ground without getting caught in the trees.)

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Kudos to John

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Before I start with substantive, and insubstantive posting, let me give a huge thanks to John for the opportunity to contribute. John’s nonpartisan attitude (some would call it equal-opportunity grumpiness) has spawned a comments section that in my opinion offers one of the most moderate and intellectually honest places for posters from both sides of the fence to meet and generally knock each other about the head and shoulder regions. All four sides of the fence if you throw in that autocratic/libertarian/permissive/Buffy-watching mumbo-jumbo.

So to start off with, let me answer the most pressing question in the blogosphere today: what’s in your iPod?

Answer: I don’t own an iPod. I listen to practically the same seventeen or eighteen CDs and that’s mostly when I drive.

In other news, in honor of poster KL I’ll probably start up a tradition of Friday beer blogging. Expect typos.

More soon!

TF

***Update***

Tunch is safe. I changed my password.

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