John Cole Presents “This Fucking Old House”

Everything over there in Iran is a mess, and we are activating a bunch more soldiers- Marines and the 82nd. At any rate, it appears that JD Vance is now “emerging” as one of the leaders in the talks with Iran which led to this minor gem:

Trump thinks Vance is an experienced middle east negotiator because someone told him JD frequently has intercourse with Ottomans.

— Loukas Christodoulou (@loukas.bsky.social) March 24, 2026 at 5:04 PM

In other news, apparently something is going on in the ethylene derivatives market, which are used in apparently everything, and the price has apparently jumped 10%. So that’s awesome. Someone who knows more can fill us in.

Betty did a great job ‘splaining the current DHS/ICE/TSA clusterfuck, and I have seen a bunch of stories in the news and elsewhere just making fun of ICE for just standing around, and it’s another mess that is entirely of Trump’s making and all of the Republicans are too craven or stupid to do anything about it. This made me roll my eyes:

Members of Congress are now facing a personal consequence from the ongoing shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security: losing one special flight perk.

Delta Airlines is pausing special services that make flights more convenient and efficient for members of Congress, as first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“Due to the impact on resources from the longstanding government shutdown, Delta will temporarily suspend specialty services to members of Congress flying Delta,” the airline said in a statement to NPR. “Next to safety, Delta’s no. 1 priority is taking care of our people and customers, which has become increasingly difficult in the current environment.”

Specialty services include airport escorts and other red coat services. Delta said lawmakers will be treated like any other passenger based on their SkyMiles status.

FUCK. THAT. They should not have special privileges at the airport to begin with- you motherfuckers are in the unique position of being one of the several hundred people in the nation of 300 million who can actually fucking do something about making air travel better. You need to rawdog airline travel. No business class or first class, jam your fucking fat arses into those 14 inch wide seats and spend 5 hours in line breathing other people’s humid air and having to overhear their conversations and smelling all the cologne and perfume the olds have on.

Or maybe this is just me. Personally, I have not flown in ten years, I believe. I just can’t. I am so pissed off by the time I arrive at the destination I am so pissed I left home. The shoes and the belt almost make me stroke out every fucking time. I have reconstructed shoulders. When I have to take my belt and shoes off I know have to carry my laptop, my luggage, a bin with shoes and a belt, ALL WHILE HOLDING MY TROUSERS UP until I can find a place to sit down and put my shoes on, and then I schlep to the bathroom, find a dry place to put down some paper towels so I can take my fucking pants off, put the belt back through the loops (again, my shoulders don’t let me put my belt on like a normal person), put my belt on, put my shoes back on, wash my hands, and schlep all my shit to the next fucking checkpoint/inconvenince.

And I am sweating? Why, because wherever I am, unless we are talking about a desert climate, they are unable to air condition anything that big well enough to get rid of the humidity of people- just this filthy layer of that all over you- only made worse by the recirculated air later on in the plane. And I am also livid and irritated by all the other people (wash your fucking hands before you leave the bathroom you fucking mutant- I say this with my whole fucking heart- I will share a bathroom with anyone gay trans none of that shit matters to me what you do in there but motherfucker wash your grimy damned hands before you leave the bathroom). And the only food is 15 dollar waters and just garbage food. And it’s not like I am germ phobic- but that filth and grossness- your whole body feeling like a child’s amusement park food court table on a humid day in Orlando or cotton candy hands at the County Fair. Horrifying.

The first thing I do when I get anywhere is shower and change clothes.

What the hell was I talking about? Politicians. Fuck them. Make them go through it like everyone else.

I have a lot more to say but Joelle just got home. As always I need a show recommendation. Dinner tonight was a grilled chicken breast with tabouli and a half a sliced avocado. It was excellent.

Tuesday Night Open ThreadPost + Comments (86)

So it appears that Donnie Dollhands had a chat with his imaginery Iranian friends, so all the fucking super geniuses said “oh thank god that’s over now everything is back to normal *hoovers a fat white line* BUY BUY BUY.” Don’t try to reason with me about this. I am convinced everything is a fraud.

Here’s some great fucking news:

Are they getting ready to seize the uranium or are they just getting ready to rescue the Marines off Kharg island after Cheeto Benito orders that clusterfuck? Try to stay positive.

This is a pretty accurate description of things from my standpoint:

The logic, insofar as there is any, goes like this: the war has crashed the global oil market so hard that the administration needs the enemy’s oil to keep gasoline prices from eating the midterms. They are unsanctioning the people they’re bombing because the bombing is working too well at the thing they didn’t want it to do. The sanctions were necessary to stop Iran funding the war, but the war made the sanctions too effective, so the sanctions had to be lifted to fund the war effort against the country that no longer needs sanctions because the oil revenues that sanctions were preventing are now required to prevent the economic damage caused by preventing those revenues, which is itself a consequence of the military campaign designed to make the sanctions unnecessary by making Iran the kind of country that doesn’t need sanctioning, which it would be, if the sanctions hadn’t been lifted to pay for making it that.

One of the things that is really pissing me off right now is people arguing whether what we are doing are technically war crimes or what is going on in Gaza and Lebanon is genocide. I really do not have time for this bullshit. All you are doing when you “debate” this bullshit is argue over how many people you killed and why you killed them because that’s what matters for the “rules.” Who the fuck cares? You just killed a shit ton of people. Knock it the fuck off and give us the people who ordered it. And stop fucking tone policing your fucking crimes. Like you think those 120 dead Iranian schoolgirls care if it was a war crime or not or the families of the fishermen in Venezuela? No.

At any rate, a bunch more happened and Ukraine is still a thing.

ICE is now in airports across the country which is a line that should never have been crossed and I am sure they are not legally allowed to be there and are not trained to do anything useful:

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have deployed to major airports across the country, helping to fill the void as thousands of security staff who are going without pay refuse to work.

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees are increasingly absent, having not received pay in weeks due to a partial government shutdown that began on 14 February.

Their absence has created huge queues and hours-long wait times at airport security checkpoints. More than 3,400 TSA agents called out of work on Sunday.

On Monday, White House border tsar Tom Homan said hundreds of ICE agents had been deployed to 14 airports in cities including New York, Atlanta and Houston.

Obviously this is a bad thing, but on the other hand, none of them are wearing masks so photograph every single one of them. Also, maybe they will do a little bit of their utlraviolence on the business travelers who so far have been protected by their wealth or whiteness from any interactions with these goons.

Also, this is going to be hell for people of color and trans people flying no matter what happens.

So apparently our super genius President has decided we are still not paying up enough for energy, and has decided that we should waste a billion dollars paying a wind farm company to NOT build renewables and instead focus on lng and oil:

The Trump administration will pay the French energy giant TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to abandon its plans to build wind farms off the East Coast, the Interior Department said on Monday at an energy conference in Houston.

Under the unusual deal, TotalEnergies would forfeit its leases in federal waters for two wind farms, which would have been built off New York and North Carolina. The Justice Department would then reimburse TotalEnergies $928 million, the amount it paid for the leases during the Biden administration.

In exchange, TotalEnergies would invest that money in oil and gas projects in the United States, including a facility in Texas that would export liquefied natural gas to global markets. The company would also commit to producing more oil in the Gulf of Mexico and said it was developing some additional gas-burning power plants to meet rising electricity demand from data centers.

One of the main reasons your utility prices are skyrocketing is because even though we sit on a metric fuckton of natural gas, it’s still a fungible commodity so they export it to wherever they can and in increasing numbers.

So we’re taking it three ways on this- no longterm cheaper renewable energy to offset increasing domestic demand, higher LNG prices for home heating and electrical generation, and we get to add a billion to the national debt. If you were wondering how you bankrupt a casino, this is how.

I think I am going to talk to my therapist when I get back home, because my anxiety levels have spiked a couple times and I spent all day Saturday angry in a simmering internal rage. Just so fucking mad I couldn’t form words and Joelle said it was like an electric energy of suck radiating from me. And it lasted a solid 5-6 hours. Everything on the national stage is just so maddening that when bullshit enters my personal sphere I have no buffer or sanity or patience to deal with it gracefully. it doesn’t happen often, but once a month or so is often enough for me. I don’t live alone anymore and I can’t just fuck off and not be around people until the mood passes.

I still have my pets and my birds and a lovely wife, though.

Oh, and if you need something to feel positive about- on 17 February, Rush Limbaugh celebrated his fifth anniversary of sobriety and I know he has many more to come. Great work, Rush.

Monday Night Open ThreadPost + Comments (147)

Getting old is really weird although I suppose I am still rather young at 55, but I feel a lot older some days. It’s just bonkers how much the weather impacts me- slightly cooler today but it has been cloudy and there is a lot of pollen and I just feel like I am walking in water all day. Things I fling around like the 40lb bag of bird seed that the other day I picked up with my left hand and threw over my shoulder and carried out of Lowe’s today felt like 500 lbs and I needed both hands to pour. Just weird. Guess this is why the military had mandatory retirement ages. Makes you also really feel for the fuckers my age doing back breaking labor, just hoping their bodies stay whole long enough to retire.

I don’t have anything to say, really. Tomorrow a lot of shit is going to go down so I am gonna keep my powder dry. You all take care.

Love the new series Tamara and Mazedancer are bringing us. That is going to be fun although it means I have to get up off my ass and do something because we have a ton of first time runners in red WV.

Sunday Night Open ThreadPost + Comments (101)

I am in kind of a grumpy mood tonight despite all the things I have going for me but most urgently at the moment is that I desperately want something sweet but there is nothing in the house that will fit what I think I want because I only bought healthful (for the most part) stuff and not the pure unadulterated crap like a chocolate bar or cookies ot shit like that or what I want right now. Which is a half gallon of ice cream. Preferably a solid cherry vanilla with those big black cherries.

At any rate, Joelle surprised me with a gift:

She absolutely adores making me look at my own face which I can not stand looking at it’s not that I just don’t take good pictures or they always get my bad angle it’s that I don’t have a good angle and honestly I’m sorta plump and don’t have angles, period. Coming soon to the Balloon Juice store!

Late Night Open ThreadPost + Comments (59)

Spent the afternoon with company and went to Cat Fest, and it was really hot so we did not stay long, then went to a local restaurant called Chilaquiles and has lunch/dinner, although I am getting peckish again but I don’t want to heat up the kitchen so I will probably just have some beets and goat cheese or something like that. I know I have a can of leseur peas and I am always down for a can of peas.

I’m in a generally shitty mood and everything sucks and I just don’t know why every last fucking thing has to be so difficult. So some new admin dickhead got hired at Bethany College a couple years ago, and has now according to rumors decided that the best way forward for the college is to axe the religious studies program either nuking the major or nuking the department completely. Before I move on, Bethany College was founded in Bethany in 1840 by one Alexander Campbell, who was the founder (whatever the word is) of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Because you are not an administrative dickhead who will be here for another two years or so and will then fuck off to another school, you can already grasp the significance of severing the religious studies program in a college with a religious tradition this rich. Not to mention that religious component is now one of the rare few links between town and college because previous administrations thought capital spending to build shitty dorms segregated from town was the best use of money.
All of this, of course, will be decided quietly (they may do lip service on hearings or all campus meetings), and we know how they will decide and the logic they will use- “it’s not what the kids are interested in and not what they want or what our business partners need from employees” my response to which is:

1.) The kids are fucking idiots which is why they are going to college in the first place- to learn how to read and write at advanced levels and think, and empathize and live vicariously, to explore and learn shit that will make them a better human being.

2.) Administration needs to get it out of their heads that small liberal arts colleges are “employee factories,” and that is a good thing because businesses and college administrators are notoriously bad at predicting future job market needs. Y’all gonna refund anyone their computer science degree when AI knocks out every entry level to mid level job?

None of this matters because they will just do whatever they want. That’s just how everything is. Everything old must be destroyed and replaced with some new bullshit because reasons, and it’s always bullshit.

The end.

*** Update ***

I forgot- we almost have a cure for sickle cell disease. Just like that- being able to cure 150k people of what makes them miserable. Science!

Saturday Night Open ThreadPost + Comments (96)

Here is a picture of me standing in the middle of a field with a couple friends of the blog who are in town (they can out themselves) after dinner.

My mouth is open and my head is not looking at the camera because I was inevitably in the middle of saying “will you just take the god damned picture” because it was an outdoor restaurant and I could feel the ENTIRE PATIO LOOKING AT ME. Joelle just loves taking pictures and has to document literally everything, whereas I have never liked having my picture taken and literally every picture of me in the army is giving the finger. I don’t like leaving that kind of evidence trail.

It was very warm today- upper 100’s maybe 108, and you could really feel the sun on your this afternoon. I went to the pool early and then got my hair cut, so I was back home inside working until about 4 pm, and I went outside to feed the birds and put clean water in the birdbath (you have to every day here with the dust and evaporation) and you could really feel the sun frying you in real time.

Climate experts and meteorologists are freaking the fuck out, and we may be entering a period of SUSTAINED drought. We are well beyond time to think about desalination plants all down the west coast and in the gulf of mexico. We need to be harnessing as much renewable energy as we can and we really need to start thinking about nuclear again. Desalination plants and all these fucking data centers are going to need a ton of juice and we just can not rely on coal (Don’t tell that to WV and the maga supermarjority of braindead cretins, though- they ain’t listening).

At any rate, Catfest tomorrow, so I am excited about that. I don’t have anything else to say.