Joe Donnelly (Democratic Senator from Indiana) is in a tough race and he took a courageous stand today coming out against Kavanaugh. I thought it was only right to raise a little money for him.
C.R.E.A.M.
For the rest of his life
Every waking moment of the rest of Jeff Flake’s life should be like this one
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) September 28, 2018
We’ve raised 16K in two days for 40 of the most competitive house seats. Let’s keep it up. (You can pick just one or two to give to limit the number of mailing lists you get on.)
Stop your sobbing
I just about lost my lunch when I heard that Bart pulled the crying card today after he got busted for being a would be rapist.
Maybe this makes me a caveman but I fucking hate it when these alpha male master of the universe types cry like babies on tv. I get it if something tragic happens, like a loss in the wildcard round, but getting found out as a rapist…no stop your fucking sobbing. Don Corleone said it best.
The Godfather also teaches us that the second bullet goes in the head — let’s win all 40 of these seats in November.
Remember, remember the 6th of November
Believe it or not, the generic ballot has tightened somewhat, though it still looks pretty good. Now is not the time to lift your foot off the Republicans’ necks. Give to the Balloon Juice Forty House Seats To Freedom fund. It’s split between 40 candidates, you can give to one or two to minimize mailing lists. You can see all the candidates here.
(I know I have the day off by one, I only ever heard of this thing from this John Lennon song.)
Update. I’m working on what Bobo/Bari etc. will write to defend Kavanaugh here. What am I missing?
Russiagate Thread: Saudi Arabia, Putin’s Russia, ‘West Michigan’ — All Oligarchies Together!
Holy crap what a scoop. https://t.co/C6jc4UtqaL
— zeddy (@Zeddary) September 26, 2018
Per the Daily Beast:
Joint U.S.-Russian raids to kill top terrorists. Teamwork between an American government agency and a sanctioned Russian fund. Moscow pouring money into the Midwest.
These are just a few of the ideas the head of a Russian sovereign wealth fund touched on during his meeting with former Blackwater head Erik Prince in the Seychelles, just weeks before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to a memo exclusively reviewed by The Daily Beast.
The meeting between Prince, an influential Trump ally, and Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of the sanctioned fund, took place on Jan. 11, 2017, at the Four Seasons Hotel in a bar overlooking the Indian Ocean. George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who advises the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates, was also present…
Since Prince’s testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Mueller’s team has received information that the meeting was a pre-organized effort to set up a backchannel between the Trump administration and the Kremlin, according to The Washington Post.
Still, the exact details of the conversation between Prince and Dmitriev in the Seychelles have remained murky. But a memo Dmitriev sent after the meeting—described here for the first time—sheds new light on the conversation and indicates it addressed some of the thorniest diplomatic challenges facing the United States and Russia…
My old friends from the Grand Rapids area treated the deVos-Prince oligarchy as second only to Michigan mosquitoes on the list of local pests that could be withstood but never completely avoided. Sam Tannenhaus’ Vanity Fair article helps explain why. ““I’m Tired of America Wasting Our Blood and Treasure”: The Strange Ascent of Betsy DeVos and Erik Prince”:
… In the solar system of elite Republican contributors, Richard DeVos Sr., who died [in early September] at age 92—one of the two founders of Amway, the direct-sale colossus—occupied an exalted place, and his offspring did too. Since the 1970s, members of the DeVos family had given as much as $200 million to the G.O.P. and been tireless promoters of the modern conservative movement—its ideas, its policies, and its crusades combining free-market economics, a push for privatization of many government functions, and Christian social values. While other far-right mega-donors may have become better known over the years (the Coorses and the Kochs, Sheldon Adelson and the Mercers), Michigan’s DeVos dynasty stands apart—for the duration, range, and depth of its influence.
Start with the think tanks, advocacy organizations, and colleges. In the Grand Rapids area alone there are three conservative academic bastions: Grand Valley State University; Calvin College, attended by several generations of DeVoses, including Rich’s daughter-in-law Betsy DeVos, 60, who is now Trump’s secretary of education; and Northwood University, her husband Dick’s alma mater. The DeVoses are also major backers of Hillsdale, the libertarian-plus-Christian liberal-arts college in southern Michigan. One celebrated alum: Betsy DeVos’s brother, Erik Prince, 49, the swashbuckling military contractor who has come to the serious attention of investigators looking into the Trump team’s alleged dealings with Russia. Other recipients of DeVos largesse: the Heritage Foundation, the Institute for Justice, and the American Enterprise Institute—the list goes on…
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I’m really just here to fundraise but I couldn’t not use this title after this article.
If this lying POS gets to the Supreme Court, we should impeach him for perjury with our new House majority. Give here to the Balloon Juice Forty House Seats to Freedom Fund. It’s all the Republican seats listed as Toss Up or Lean Democrat plus four more candidates nominated by you the readers.
Here’s the full list of candidates. You can just give to one or two at a time (it’s an option when you click through above to contribute) to avoid getting on too many mailing lists.
Cindy Axne (IA-03)
Andrew Janz (CA-22)
Paul Davis (KS-02)
Antonio Delgado (NY-19)
Katie Hill (CA-25)
Angie Craig (MN-02)
Abigail Spanberger (VA-07)
Jessica Morse (CA-04)
Colin Allred (TX-32)
Mike Levin (CA-49)
Mikie Sherrill (NJ-11)
Katie Porter (CA-45)
Gil Cisneros (CA-39)
Dean Phillips (MN-03)
Vangie Williams (VA-01)
Elissa Slotkin (MI-08)
Haley Stevens (MI-11)
Harley Rouda (CA-48)
Kim Schrier (WA-08)
Aftab Pureval (OH-01)
Abby Finkenauer (IA-01)
Andy Kim (NJ-03)
Brendan Kelly (IL-12)
Conor Lamb (PA-17)
Jason Crow (CO-06)
Dan McCready (NC-09)
Sean Casten (IL-06)
Xochitl Torres Small (NM-02)
Cathy Albro (MI-03)
Lizzie Fletcher (TX-07)
Sharice Davids (KS-03)
Jennifer Wexton (VA-10)
Tom Malinowski (NJ-07)
Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ-02)
Jared Golden (ME-02)
Susan Wild (PA-07)
Elaine Luria (VA-02)
Josh Harder (CA-10)
Anthony Brindisi (NY-22)
Amy McGrath (KY-06)
#UniversalFacePalm Open Thread: Trump Against the World
Congratulations to president Trump for achieving something Obama never could – Being laughed at by the UN.
— The Volatile Mermaid (@OhNoSheTwitnt) September 25, 2018
WATCH: Laughter in UN General Assembly as President Trump touts his administration's progress in past 2 years: "Didn't expect that reaction, but that's OK." pic.twitter.com/V7GViB5g4B
— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 25, 2018
Spencer Ackerman, at the Daily Beast:
Diplomats and heads of state from all over the world laughed at President Donald Trump’s boast that he has “accomplished more than any administration in the history of our country.” At the podium of the United Nations General Assembly, Trump took it on the nose—“Didn’t expect that reaction, but that’s OK”—and then sleepily delivered a bellicose, 35-minute presentation of international cooperation as a threat to America…
Trump’s message was hardly one of leaving the world to its own peaceful devices. It was one where Trump sets the conditions for the world to follow, cloaked in revisionist history. Global free trade, for decades pushed on developing economies by the U.S. and yielding substantial wealth transfer upwards, was portrayed as a mechanism for other countries to “rig the system in their favor.” In between praising the Trump-coaxing regime of Saudi Arabia, Trump attacked OPEC as “ripping off the rest of the world” before demanding protection money: “We want them to start lowering [oil] prices, and they must contribute substantially to military protection from now on.” U.S. efusal to participate in the 2016 Global Compact on Migration, an entirely voluntary framework, was premised on preventing an “international body unaccountable to our own citizens.”
Everywhere Trump looked, he saw global avarice encircling to choke the life out of America–an America he defined in the blood-and-soil terms of “a culture built on strong families, deep faith, and strong independence”…
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The U.K., Germany, France, Russia and China have agreed to establish a special payments system to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Iran stemming from Trump's unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal, the Financial Times reports.https://t.co/cElx3fGr5X
— Axios (@axios) September 25, 2018
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Trump: "The United States is the biggest giver in the world by far of foreign aid, but few give anything to us."
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 25, 2018
#UniversalFacePalm Open Thread: Trump Against the WorldPost + Comments (63)