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Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

In my day, never was longer.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

“Alexa, change the president.”

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

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

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Be a wild strawberry.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

The lights are all blinking red.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

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

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Open Thread:  Hey Lurkers!  (Holiday Post)

Open Threads

You are here: Home / Archives for Open Threads

Seattle Peeps, Here’s a Post So You Can Get this Meetup Thing Figured Out

by WaterGirl|  August 16, 202410:27 pm| 101 Comments

This post is in: Meetups, Open Threads

And totally open thread.

I’ve worked 11.5 hours today and I’m going to bed.

update: I just noticed the fundraising thermometer has risen a bit.  If anyone has donated today for the match, please send me email so I can make sure you’re matched.

I’ll have another fundraising post up in the morning, so you can ‘fess up there, if you prefer.  I’d like to get this one finished off before the convention starts on Monday!

 

Seattle Peeps, Here’s a Post So You Can Get this Meetup Thing Figured OutPost + Comments (101)

War for Ukraine Day 905: As the Clock Strikes Twelve the Bombardments Resume

by Adam L Silverman|  August 16, 20249:55 pm| 32 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Military, Open Threads, Russia, Silverman on Security, War, War in Ukraine

Two quick housekeeping notes: First, Rosie is still doing amazing. Her next treatment is Monday. Sometime this week I’m going to be putting in a lower/shorter bed frame to make it easier for her to get on and off the bed. A year ago, as some of you may recall, I bought a new mattress, which I love. But it’s about three or four inches higher than the old one. So this will take the height back down to what it was a year ago.

Second, I’m still fried, though I did get a lovely four hour nap this afternoon. Minus the fifteen minutes where both legs cramped. That said, I’m going to keep this on the briefer side tonight as I want to go and crash.

As we’ve noted a couple of times, as soon as the clock strikes twelve in Ukraine each night, the bombardments commence.

Midnight in Kyiv. Wondering if the sirens are about to go off or if the drones might pass us by this time. pic.twitter.com/OiyrWttcO1

— Oleksandra Povoroznyk 🇺🇦 (@rynkrynk) August 16, 2024

New day stsrts with new air raid alert in Kharkiv 😒 pic.twitter.com/qAcrc60Nko

— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) August 16, 2024

Most nights these assaults use Iranian Shahed drones. But every few nights the Russians switch over to their cruise missiles and glide bombs. This is a strategy of terror. Specifically, to stress the Ukrainians out. To interrupt and disrupt sleep patterns. To create adrenaline overload. All in order to destroy their social resilience.

Absolutely THE WORST national security team that could be assembled by a Democratic president.

Full transcript. pic.twitter.com/GmE8ytE1bQ

— Colby Badhwar 🇨🇦🇬🇧 (@ColbyBadhwar) August 15, 2024

Have those people considered that long-range strikes help us avoid dying from russian long-range strikes?🤔 https://t.co/8rY1oH9HEZ

— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) August 16, 2024

No, no they have not. It does not enter into their mental calculus at all. To quote former Shin Bet Director Avraham Shalom, “raq taktik, ayn strategik.” In English: “only tactics, no strategy.”

For want of a nail!!!!

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

show full post on front page

We Must Inflict Maximum Damage on All Russian Positions, and We Are Doing That – Address by the President

16 August 2024 – 20:18

I wish you good health, fellow Ukrainians!

The main points. There have already been several reports by Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi about the frontline situation and our operation in the Kursk region. We see that the occupier is suffering losses, and this is helpful, very helpful for our defense. It is about destroying the logistics of the Russian army and draining their reserves. We must inflict maximum damage on all Russian positions, and we are doing that. I thank each of our warriors for their precision, I thank them for strength and for resilience. Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi reported on our defensive steps in the Donbas: Pokrovsk and Toretsk directions. As well as our advance in the Kursk region. We are eliminating the Russian military presence in the area of our operations there, and replenishing “the exchange fund” for our state.

Second. The new Ambassadors of the partner countries – Belgium, India, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Italy, and Mexico – have arrived to work in Ukraine. I have received their letters of credence and am grateful for the clear support of our territorial integrity and international law. Also today, I held several meetings regarding our further diplomatic efforts aimed at bringing peace for Ukraine closer, a just peace, and at protecting our people. We are preparing some news.

And one more thing for today, which is extremely important. I spoke with members of the Council of Churches and Religious Organizations. And I am grateful for their support of our course towards spiritual independence of Ukraine. A draft law has been submitted to the Verkhovna Rada; it can actually guarantee that there will be no manipulation of the Ukrainian Church by Moscow. This draft law should work and contribute to the unity of Ukraine, our true spiritual unity.

I thank everyone who is strengthening the independence of Ukraine!

Glory to Ukraine!

Say cheese!

POV: You look at the window and see the Abrams tank.

📹: @United24media pic.twitter.com/lL57jDUHZC

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) August 16, 2024

Queen Hornet’s got a gun!

The Ukrainian military modified a Queen Hornet FPV into a machine-gun drone

A few days ago, one of our units won a ruzzian AK-74 assault rifle with the help of a Queen Hornet drone and a magnet

The military found a use for it – they installed it on the Queen and shot with it.… pic.twitter.com/7GbXVTs0s8

— Wild hornets (@wilendhornets) August 16, 2024

The Ukrainian military modified a Queen Hornet FPV into a machine-gun drone

A few days ago, one of our units won a ruzzian AK-74 assault rifle with the help of a Queen Hornet drone and a magnet

The military found a use for it – they installed it on the Queen and shot with it. The modification is being prepared for full operation and we will help them

Stay tuned for more🔥

Help the Ukrainian Armed Forces

Donate to the Wild Hornets on PayPal: [email protected]

Experimental Ukrainian FPV of @wilendhornets with an installed assault riflehttps://t.co/dHwMWkQaT1 pic.twitter.com/XSjWFRxcZB

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 16, 2024

Lithuania:

Thank you, our friends, for your unshakable support in the fight for freedom and peace.
🇺🇦🤝🇱🇹 https://t.co/6rIwlDoYZg

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) August 16, 2024

A 1 year ago, Ukraine took one of the most unprecedented steps – it announced the independent opening of a sea corridor through the Black Sea. On August 16, 2023, the first ship left the port of Odesa. Since then, more than 2,300 vessels with various cargoes have used the… pic.twitter.com/LWE0QT9yEa

— Oleksandr Kubrakov (@OlKubrakov) August 16, 2024

A 1 year ago, Ukraine took one of the most unprecedented steps – it announced the independent opening of a sea corridor through the Black Sea. On August 16, 2023, the first ship left the port of Odesa. Since then, more than 2,300 vessels with various cargoes have used the corridor. The total volume of transshipment is almost 65.5 million tons.

This was made possible by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, a team of port workers, businesses and international partners who supported our efforts

Look at that! Another red line crossed without any actual Russian response. It is almost like Putin expects his rhetoric and saber rattling will force the US to make the worst possible strategic decisions in response. I cannot imagine where he got the idea that that would work? It’s a puzzlement.

Kursk Oblast, Russia:

The unique footage of the first hours of 🇺🇦 Defense Forces operation in the Kursk region.
Demining, destroying the enemy’s defensive lines, the work of aviation and artillery, prisoners.

📹: Air Assault Forces Command pic.twitter.com/oopsMdGRxX

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) August 16, 2024

The exact moment of the second strike on the bridge. Is this the red line yet, or are we still on the edge? pic.twitter.com/JKqpN6o799

— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) August 16, 2024

Russian propaganda bloggers are crying that 700 Russian soldiers are surrounded in the Kursk region, and the bridge behind them was destroyed🍿👀 pic.twitter.com/GGj4ItjWSE

— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) August 16, 2024

Ukraine’s Air Force admits its role behind this via “high-precision strikes” particularly on Russian “logistics centers and ground lines of communications”.

JDAM-ER?

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) August 16, 2024

It’s an interesting time loop.

Sudzha was in fact the first “capital” of the Russian Bolshevik invasion of Ukraine in late 1918 as the center of the “Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic”… now the Ukrainian de-communization came to where things begun, in some form 😀

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) August 16, 2024

Ukrainian Special Forces are on the hunt!

The Special Operations Forces of Ukraine work and and capture a a group of Russian military in Kursk regionhttps://t.co/3ylttoT45y pic.twitter.com/BUDFVusWL3

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 16, 2024

Video of Ukrainian SSO conducting an ambush in Kursk oblast. https://t.co/NVzBliirB8https://t.co/SyPwImQCsL pic.twitter.com/TmSXgiP57U

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) August 14, 2024

We have confirmation of the Ukrainian kill of a Ka-52 rotary wing in Kursk Oblast:

Debris of a Russian Ka-52 which was downed from MANPADS on 10.08.2024 in the Kursk regionhttps://t.co/QbNfeKlwtu https://t.co/ms1SnrlE3X pic.twitter.com/YYlS1qcmdh

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 16, 2024

The Ukrainians are making progress on one of their strategic objectives in the Kursk offensive:

The negotiations follow more than a week of heavy fighting in the western Russian region and what Ukraine’s domestic security service has said was the ‘biggest capture of the enemy that has been carried out at one time’. https://t.co/g5cVi2lpeK pic.twitter.com/3Oood6k2jG

— Financial Times (@FT) August 15, 2024

From The Financial Times:

Ukraine says it has begun talks with Russia over the exchange of prisoners captured by Kyiv as it presses on with its startling counter-incursion in the Kursk region.

The negotiations follow more than a week of heavy fighting in the western Russian region and what Ukraine’s domestic security service said was the “biggest capture of the enemy that has been carried out at one time”.

Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner, told local media on Wednesday evening that his Russian counterpart had contacted him to open discussions on the exchange of prisoners of war.

Ukraine’s military intelligence, which leads negotiations on prisoners of war, confirmed to the Financial Times that it was working on an exchange.

Kyiv has not disclosed the exact number of Russian prisoners its forces have captured in the Kursk operation but government officials and soldiers at the border told the FT that the figure is in the “hundreds”.

The talks come 10 days after Ukraine mounted its audacious counter-incursion into Russian territory. Kyiv’s top general, Oleksandr Syrsky, said on Thursday that Ukraine held 1,150 sq km in the Kursk region, up from 1,000 sq km.

Syrsky said his forces had complete control of the town of Sudzha, where a Ukrainian military office is being set up. The town, with a prewar population of 5,000, also houses a measuring station for natural gas on one of the last pipelines shipping Russian fuel to central Europe.

Ukrainian troops were advancing by between 500 metres and 1.5km each day in different directions, about half the distance reported on Tuesday, Syrsky added.

The FT could not independently verify his claims, but both figures indicate that Ukraine’s offensive in Kursk is slowing. Its troops were continuing their attempts to occupy more territory, said Syrsky.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Wednesday that its own forces had pushed back Ukrainians in seven Kursk settlements between 30km and 90km from the border.

The capture of Russian prisoners is likely to boost Kyiv’s calls for the return of thousands of its own soldiers and civilians who have been taken during Russia’s two-and-a-half-year invasion and occupation of large swaths of eastern and southern Ukraine.

Many young conscripts were captured by Ukrainian forces in the early phase of Kyiv’s stealthy incursion — the first such operation on Russian soil since the second world war.

While Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not disclosed the objectives of the operation, he has repeatedly praised his soldiers for taking Russian captives on the battlefield and “replenishing” what he called an “exchange fund” for a swap of captives.

Before the incursion, each side already held hundreds of prisoners of war. President Vladimir Putin said in June that Russia held about 6,500 Ukrainian troops. He also said that Ukraine was holding more than 1,300 Russian soldiers, a figure confirmed by a person familiar with the situation.

Much more at the link!

Whether this is an intended strategic objective or just a positive second order/ripple effect remains to be seen, but it is an interesting development.

It seems that some of the beneficiaries of the operation in Russia’s Kursk region are the Baltic States, Sweden and Finland.

Russia is moving troops from Kaliningrad to the front. This city serves as a stronghold for the recently restored Leningrad Military District. The main…

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) August 16, 2024

It seems that some of the beneficiaries of the operation in Russia’s Kursk region are the Baltic States, Sweden and Finland.

Russia is moving troops from Kaliningrad to the front. This city serves as a stronghold for the recently restored Leningrad Military District. The main task is to ensure Russia’s dominance in the Baltic States and Scandinavia. But now the situation has changed.

Part of the potential of the Leningrad Military District was reduced during the actions north of Kharkiv. Now, apparently, the second stage has begun.

By the way, this clearly demonstrates how much Russia is “afraid” of NATO. It also shows once again that Ukraine is the real shield of Europe in the east.

In fact, Ukraine has already become part of the European collective defense system.

Remember, that Polish President Duda has been spoiling for a fight with Russia since the re-invasion of Ukraine began. I don’t really think that Poland is going to try to scarf up Kaliningrad, but military deception (MILDEC) operations to raise Putin’s blood pressure are not out of the question.

One of the key questions about Ukraine’s Kursk offensive is determining what Ukrainian advances or occupation of Russian territory actually means. Its significance will largely be determined by how Russia responds. If Russia diverts significant reserves from Ukraine and starts a… https://t.co/hVdxfSJSGJ

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) August 16, 2024

One of the key questions about Ukraine’s Kursk offensive is determining what Ukrainian advances or occupation of Russian territory actually means. Its significance will largely be determined by how Russia responds. If Russia diverts significant reserves from Ukraine and starts a costly operation to retake the land, like with Krynky, or is willing to negotiate, then this could be significant. But what if Putin determines that he doesn’t need to do this and that the risk of serious domestic political ramifications is limited? It is possible that this will turn out to be another embarrassing episode for Putin that will have little tangible effect.

“Putin’s hold on power is unlikely to be weakened as a result of this humiliation. The entire Russian political-military establishment is complicit in his war & responsible for this disaster.”

Cautionary analysis from @eugene_rumer about Kursk.https://t.co/o5pvYVo5oe pic.twitter.com/fwn2MTUikn

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) August 15, 2024

From Eugene Rumer at the Carnegie Endowment:

“Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in,” President Vladimir Putin, echoing Michael Corleone’s famous line from The Godfather Part III, probably thought in recent days. Until a week ago, the war in Ukraine was going well for the Russian leader: his troops were making small but steady territorial gains, the West was growing tired of the war, and Kyiv’s uncompromising refusal to negotiate an end to the conflict was softening. And then, on August 6, the Ukrainian army launched its offensive into the Kursk region of Russia.

It is hard to imagine a more humiliating setback for Putin and his generals than the Ukrainian army seizing some 800 square kilometers of Russian territory in that particular region. To most Russians, the very mention of Kursk invokes the memory of the battle of July–August of 1943. In Soviet and Russian historiography, the Soviet army’s victory in that epic clash paved the way for, in Putin’s own words, “the imminent and inevitable collapse” of Nazi Germany. With countless articles devoted to it in Russian military publications and generations of Soviet and Russian military officers schooled in its lessons, the Battle of Kursk has long been held up by Soviet and Russian military science as the pinnacle of the art of war. On August 23, 2023, Putin personally traveled to the old battlefield to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of that victory, to unveil the Battle of Kursk memorial, and to present awards to soldiers who distinguished themselves in the “special military operation” against Ukraine.

What a difference a year makes! Photographs released by the Kremlin from Putin’s August 12 meeting with his security chiefs to discuss the Ukrainian offensive show little jubilation on their part. The Second Battle of Kursk—if that is what the Ukrainian offensive into Russia will be called—is testimony to both Ukrainian bravery, daring, and resolve and the historic blunder Putin committed by launching a full-scale assault on Ukraine two and a half years ago.

No other part of Russia evokes more iconic images of the heartland than Kursk and nearby regions of Orel and Tula. Spasskoye-Lutovinovo, the estate of Ivan Turgenev, one of the classics of Russian literature, is just to the north in the Oryol region, and Yasnaya Polyana, Leo Tolstoy’s estate, is farther to the north, on the road to Moscow. Both are now museums and cultural shrines supported by the Russian state. Both fell under German occupation during World War II—the legacy Putin invoked in 2022 as the justification for the assault on Ukraine. Russia, he said on February 24, 2022, as his troops marched into Ukraine, “cannot feel safe, develop, and exist while facing a permanent threat from the territory of today’s Ukraine,” which he charged was ruled by a Nazi regime.

In the category of self-fulfilling prophecies, by invading Ukraine, Putin has created a “permanent threat” to the Russian heartland where none had existed before his criminal blunder. Ukraine had posed no military threat to Russia prior to February 2022. Even after Russia had illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, Ukrainian public opinion was divided on the question of joining NATO. As late as November 2021—with Russia massing troops on the border with Ukraine—membership in the alliance was favored by 54 percent of Ukrainians, while 28 percent opposed it, and the rest didn’t know what to say. A still significant minority of Ukrainians—21 percent—also favored joining the Russian-led customs union. Only 3 percent of Ukrainians considered the annexation of Crimea by Russia an important issue. Twenty percent—a significant minority but far below such issues as corruption and cost of living—considered the Russian-sponsored conflict in Donbas a priority. In February 2024, two years since the start of the all-out Russian invasion, 77 percent favored joining NATO, only 5 percent opposed it, and 46 percent saw Russia as the biggest threat to Ukraine (second only to government corruption at 51 percent).

No matter how it ends, the Second Battle of Kursk is a preview of what the Russian national security establishment will have to worry about for the indefinite future. On its southwestern flank, Russia will face a country moved by its sense of grief, trauma, historic injustice, and desire for revenge. Ukraine will have a battle-tested, motivated military, equipped with the latest armaments from its own surging defense industry and its NATO partners. Even if the war ends with Russia holding on to the territories it has occupied, the victory will be truly Pyrrhic. For a country like Russia that has long equated its security with land acquisition and strategic depth, the emergence of Ukraine—thanks to Putin’s blunder—as an implacable adversary within easy striking distance of the Russian heartland is a permanent security threat that will long outlast Putin.

However, Putin’s hold on power is unlikely to be weakened as a result of this humiliation. The entire Russian political and military establishment is complicit in his war and responsible for this disaster. They are all Putin’s creatures who depend on him for their political and probably physical survival: Sergei Shoigu, Putin’s fishing and hiking buddy who served as defense minister for over a decade and only recently was moved to the largely ceremonial chairmanship of the Security Council, while the Defense Ministry is being rocked by seemingly endless revelations of corruption and arrests of senior officers; Alexander Bortnikov, the long-serving head of the FSB—the Federal Security Service—that had fed Putin rosy predictions about a short, victorious war; and General Staff chief General Valery Gerasimov, whose name has become synonymous with military incompetence. After Yevgeny Prigozhin’s coup attempt a year ago, when “Putin’s chef” accused them of incompetence and threatened their survival, they are holding on to Putin’s coattails even tighter.

The Russian public, brainwashed by the propaganda it is fed constantly on TV, remains broadly supportive of the war. In a July poll conducted by Levada, one of the few remaining independent Russian public opinion research organizations, 75 percent of respondents approved of the war. And based on Russian media reporting, some of which has been surprisingly informative, the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region is reinforcing the Russian public’s supportive attitudes. Apparently indifferent or possibly ill-informed about the destruction of Ukrainian towns and villages by Russian troops, Russian residents of the Kursk region affected by the fighting have been shocked by the sight of damaged buildings and burning vehicles, the confusion that prevails among Russian first responders, and the evacuation order affecting some 120,000 people.

In their eyes, the Ukrainian attack is proof that the war is justified. To the extent they criticize it, much like Prigozhin, they aim their anger at Putin’s generals rather than Putin. “There is only crazy corruption [in the Ministry of Defense],” said one evacuee to a reporter from the Russian daily Kommersant. “They are all being sent to prison, while simple folk look and wonder, ‘You want to win the war with such people?’ . . . In 2022, we all felt sincerely patriotic. Everything for the front, everything for victory. . . . But then we saw that everything is going not as it was planned. And we began to think—who made those plans? . . . Maybe it made no sense to march on Kyiv? Maybe we should have liberated Donbas first? Why did [derogatory term for Ukrainians] prepare for ten years [for the war], while we negotiated with the West for ten years? They—[the West]—have shown their face at the [Paris] Olympics—all Satan-worshippers and pederasts.”

More at the link.

Here we have an ignoramus quoting someone who was allowed to fail upwards through academia into becoming important.

Beyond omitting the obvious fact that Ukraine has overrun and captured thousands of soldiers, commentators like Mearsheimer ignore that this counteroffensive, more than anything else, demonstrates that Russia’s reserves are as exhausted as Ukraine’s.

Neither side can quickly… https://t.co/2mwXZm1vM5

— Fabian Hoffmann (@FRHoffmann1) August 16, 2024

Beyond omitting the obvious fact that Ukraine has overrun and captured thousands of soldiers, commentators like Mearsheimer ignore that this counteroffensive, more than anything else, demonstrates that Russia’s reserves are as exhausted as Ukraine’s.

Neither side can quickly mobilize new forces or rapidly increase its warfighting capacity. This is why Russia appears unable to respond to the incursion and must withdraw forces from other fronts to defend its own territory.

I repeat: This war is far from decided for either side. However, if the West remains steadfast and provides Ukraine with what it needs to stem Russian strategic mobilization through 2025-27, I am more convinced than ever that Ukraine can win this war.

Hoffman is right, Mearsheimer and Apartheid Clyde Junior are wrong. Not that this is breaking news.

The Russian have committed another war crime at the Kolotilovka border crossing:

Another horrifying video of a beheaded Ukrainian soldier has surfaced today.

Despite this, the West continues to expect Ukraine to fight with its hands tied behind its back. We are at war with genocidal terrorists and must be allowed to defend ourselves by any means necessary! https://t.co/yj1hPaiCy0

— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) August 16, 2024

I’ve seen the video, it is not particularly gruesome, but you do not need to see it. Do not go looking for it.

Compare and contrast with how the Ukrainian military is treating the Russians in Kursk:

“[Ukrainian] soldiers told us, ‘We don’t touch you. Live a peaceful life, everything’s fine.’ “

This is how the houses of the residents of Sudzha, Kursk region of Russia, look like after the Ukrainian troops entered the city. Nothing has changed – they are still standing… https://t.co/WlUmbr5jMD pic.twitter.com/nU0FeNidBH

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) August 16, 2024

“[Ukrainian] soldiers told us, ‘We don’t touch you. Live a peaceful life, everything’s fine.’ ”

This is how the houses of the residents of Sudzha, Kursk region of Russia, look like after the Ukrainian troops entered the city. Nothing has changed – they are still standing perfectly intact. There is an abundance of products in one of the local stores, and humanitarian aid is being brought from Ukraine to those in need.

Dnipro airport, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast:

Presumably, referring to this.https://t.co/TAD9fI67CO

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) August 16, 2024

Toretsk and Pokrovsk:

Updated map from @Deepstate_UA showing Russian advances into Toretsk and on the Pokrovsk front and Ukrainian advances in Kursk oblast.https://t.co/0er0klTDnQhttps://t.co/2LoW9YlGz3 https://t.co/l510uj77ct pic.twitter.com/NIqLasCQFR

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) August 16, 2024

Kherson Oblast:

Successful night hunt for Russian Pantsir-1S air defence system. Kherson region. https://t.co/MfiOLm4UtJ pic.twitter.com/OmJP4IiJFF

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 16, 2024

These people need to be sanctioned into penury, have their citizenship stripped, and dropped off the coast of Siberia in a dinghy with a  half day’s worth of supplies.

The world’s biggest oilfield services company is expanding in Russia following the exit of its main western rivals since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. ⁦@JamieSmythF⁩ ⁦@NastyaStognei⁩ and ⁦@xtophercook⁩ report: https://t.co/7iPyTNUEh5

— max seddon (@maxseddon) August 16, 2024

The Financial Times has the details: (emphasis mine)

The world’s biggest oilfield services company is expanding in Russia following the exit of its main western rivals since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

SLB, the Houston-based company formerly known as Schlumberger, has signed new contracts and recruited hundreds of staff in the country even after its two largest US rivals Baker Hughes and Halliburton both sold their Russian businesses to local managers in 2022.

Peter Voser, chair of Swiss-based ABB, which also left in 2022, said: “We accept that some others will maybe not follow that and hence, they may have a competitive advantage. But I think that’s a short-term viewpoint and that will bite them at some stage.”

Documents obtained by non-profit group Global Witness and seen by the Financial Times show that in December SLB’s Russian business signed a contract with the Russian oil and gas institute Vnigni, which commits the company to help it build models of oil and gas deposits that can be used to develop projects.

The FT has identified more than 1,000 job advertisements posted by the company since December, seeking roles that range from drivers to chemists and geologists. Benefits on offer range from lunch at work and access to sports facilities to participation in discounted share schemes.

Searches of Russian trademark and corporate databases by the FT show SLB Russian subsidiaries registered two new trademarks in July.

SLB has been upfront that it has no plans to leave Russia. But in July 2023 the company said it was “halting shipments of products and technology into Russia from all SLB facilities worldwide in response to the continued expansion of international sanctions”.

Russian customs filings show that after this ban was imposed, such imports slowed to a stop by the start of September.

But filings show the company also continued to import materials from other sources, bringing in $17.5mn of equipment between August and December 2023, the most recent date of available records. Of this, $2.2mn was declared as having been originally manufactured by SLB or its subsidiaries.

SLB declined to comment. A person close to the company said the imports were not “from an SLB facility” and are therefore “consistent with SLB’s public statements and within international sanctions guidelines”.

Oilfield services providers carry out much of the grunt work for the global oil and gas industry — everything from building roads and laying pipes to drilling wells and pumping crude. But they also provide access to sophisticated technologies that are vital to support exploration and development of complex drilling operations.

Some of the goods SLB imported into Russia are of types that other governments have expressed concerns about: $3.3mn of the equipment shipped since July is in categories that could be subject to controls if exported from the EU to the country. The most expensive items in this category are described in filings as electrical cabling and chemicals.

The goods, however, come from countries applying no such controls. Most of the flow of SLB imports — $13mn worth — came from China, while a further $3mn came from India. The most expensive single part was a $1.3mn “heavy-duty non-magnetic drill pipe”, which was shipped from China.

But western policymakers have avoided imposing comprehensive sanctions on oilfield services in Russia over concerns it would choke off fossil fuel exports and cause a spike in global oil prices.

In May, a US Department of State official said SLB had “thus far” not breached sanctions and the company had a clear understanding of “where the guardrails” were.

A Treasury spokesperson told the FT: “The United States and an international coalition opposing Russia remain committed to reducing [Vladimir] Putin’s profits. At the same time, simply aiming to stop the flow of Russian oil would have serious consequences for the global economy.”

“Western energy firms are still free to help Russia produce oil, and to help fund the war,” said Lela Stanley, a senior investigator for Global Witness, which is set to issue a report on SLB on Friday. “That’s a profound failure.”

For want of a nail!!!!

Speaking of people who need to be sanctioned, and I’m not referring to financial penalties, the DOJ finally moves against known Russian asset Dimitri Simes.

The US has finally started taking action against Russian agents inside the country. The FBI is searching the American home of propagandist and KGB (FSB) agent Dimitri Simes, who purchased it for $1.63 million earned from airings on Kremlin media.

Although Solovyov and other… pic.twitter.com/yQaDwAQrl1

— Denis Danilov (@DenisDanilovL) August 16, 2024

The US has finally started taking action against Russian agents inside the country. The FBI is searching the American home of propagandist and KGB (FSB) agent Dimitri Simes, who purchased it for $1.63 million earned from airings on Kremlin media.

Although Solovyov and other Russian propagandists present him as an American political scientist, he is actually Russian. Dmitry was born in Moscow to a family of Soviet dissidents with the surname Simis, but after moving to the U.S. he changed it to the more American surname Simes.

In the Russian media, this “political scientist” talks about the weakness of Ukraine, which for the third year already “is about to be captured”, about the danger of escalation and scares NATO with a nuclear strike. To better understand how qualitatively he works for the Kremlin, I will conclude the post with an example of his address to NATO countries:

“But here we must also realize that Russia’s patience is not infinite, and that Russia’s ability not to respond to growing Western military pressure is not infinite. And where they refuse to engage in diplomacy, and it is Washington, London and Brussels that refuse, they must realize that Russia will have to persuade them by other means. In the Soviet Union’s Armed Forces, there was once a saying about recruits: ‘If you don’t know how to do it, we’ll teach you, if you don’t want to do it, we’ll make you do it.’ I think it is useful for Washington and other NATO capitals to familiarize themselves with this saying.”

#RussialsATerroristState #RussiaIsCollapsing #UkraineRussiaWar

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has the details. (emphasis mine)

Agents of the FBI have raided and searched the Virginia home of Dmitri Simes, a prominent political commentator and author who hosts a current-affairs program on Russia’s state-run Channel One television, the newspaper Rappahannock News reported on August 16.

The FBI told the paper the search began on August 13 but declined to comment further, RFE/RL’s Russian Service reported.

Simes told the paper he is currently out of the country, but was “puzzled and concerned” by the FBI’s action. He told the Russian state news agency TASS on August 16 that the reports that FBI agents were at his home were true, although he had not been officially notified.

Simes was born in Moscow in 1947 and emigrated to the United States in 1973. He served as an informal adviser to former U.S. President Richard Nixon and regularly traveled with Nixon to the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries.

In 1994, Nixon named him to head the Center for the National Interest, which at the time was called the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom. Simes retired from the position in 2022.

Simes also advised the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump and arranged an important 2016 foreign-policy speech in which Trump outlined a vision for greater cooperation with Russia.

Simes’s name was mentioned more than 100 times in a 2019 report by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller entitled Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election.

Simes moderated a question-and-answer session with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2023.

Earlier this month, Fox News reported that FBI agents had raided the New York home of Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq who has been a frequent contributor to Russian government media including RT and Sputnik. An FBI spokesperson told Fox the search was part of an “ongoing” investigation.

Here’s my take on that one and only Trump foreign policy speech in 2016, which was also when I began to delineate the Trump doctrine.

Commenter JCJ sent me this:

pic.twitter.com/yoUh8GMWEF

— Andrew (@sranysovok) August 15, 2024

And while it is funny, we also need to put it in a proper context of 2024.

Fellas, IMHO, enough with all that “German generals discuss the Kursk offensive in 2024” jokes.

Today’s Germany, a totally different country with totally different mindsets and values that is a galaxy away from what it used to be 80 years ago, does not deserve these insults.…

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) August 16, 2024

Fellas, IMHO, enough with all that “German generals discuss the Kursk offensive in 2024” jokes.

Today’s Germany, a totally different country with totally different mindsets and values that is a galaxy away from what it used to be 80 years ago, does not deserve these insults.

Quite the opposite, in today’s war of aggression in Europe, Germany is totally on the good side as Ukraine’s 2nd largest defense aid provider. In a sense, Germany thus completed its own circle of redemption by making this choice.

We often criticize the German leadership’s resolve, but facts are facts.

Those are not “Germna tanks breaking into Kurks again”; those are Ukrainian vehicles provided by Germany and many other nations to be used in a surprise offensive operation in Russian territory – totally at Ukraine’s discretion and responsibility for the sake of survival of a 40-million European democracy being devoured by totalitarian Russia.

If someone deserves to be compared to Nazis here, it’s that ghoul Putin drunk with blood and his generals erasing entire cities into dust, as well as his armies of Nazi-led convicts and mercenaries with their human wave attacks, mass graves, acts of decapitation, dismemberment, and endless lust for more blood.

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

There are no new Patron tweets or videos tonight. Here is some adjacent material.

☺️#Olimpiadas2024 #Kyiv #Ukraine #Olympic2024 #uaarmy #UkraineRussiaWar️️ #UkraineWillWin #dog #cat #animal #cats #CatsLover #ParisOlympics2024 pic.twitter.com/YXpyWri5dj

— UkrARMY cats & dogs (@UAarmy_animals) August 1, 2024

https://t.co/w1UUbcb6PU pic.twitter.com/xhObRvXZLC

— UkrARMY cats & dogs (@UAarmy_animals) July 31, 2024

Open thread!

War for Ukraine Day 905: As the Clock Strikes Twelve the Bombardments ResumePost + Comments (32)

She is an Angel in a Polyester Uniform

by @heymistermix.com|  August 16, 20246:26 pm| 180 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

One of the fun things about the last couple of weeks is the absolute inability of the biggest shit talking mudslingers in politics to lay a hand on either Harris or Walz. Let’s start with Harris — do they have anything but the “is she really black?” racist nonsense? If they do, I haven’t seen it.

Also, she’s authentically middle class, and we know that because she worked at McDonald’s when she was young. Every middle-class kid of her generation can relate to a shitty high school fast food job (I certainly can). If you want to be humbled, do that job for a few days. (It’s also a good way to keep yourself from uttering the stupidest sentence that people who haven’t done a restaurant job will speak: “Wouldn’t it be great to open a restaurant?” No, it really wouldn’t. It’s hard, demanding work, and most restaurants fail in the first year.)

As for Walz, again, nonsense on stilts is all that we’ve heard. Let’s take this taco crisis. Here’s their massive gotcha: even though Walz said that black pepper is about as spicy as it gets for Minnesotans, and he mentioned making “white guy tacos,” Walz posted a taco recipe that actually had some spice.

First, tell me you’ve never been to rural Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota or Nebraska, without saying it. The native cuisine there is absolutely bland. Cream of mushroom features prominently in every hot dish. You’ll never walk into a regular restaurant and get anything that’s the least bit spicy. (Of course, nowadays there are Mexican restaurants everywhere, since Mexican laborers are indispensable to the ag economy, even though the Trump-voting rural folks are living in denial about that.)

Second, Here’s the recipe. It features ground turkey because Minnesota is the #1 turkey producer in the nation, and Walz is pushing that. And, yes, it calls for a jar of medium taco sauce, a can of diced chiles (mild) and an unspecified amount of chili powder. But it also calls for a pound of turkey, 16 oz of sour cream and a bag of tater tots. You could dump a quarter cup of chili powder into that mess and barely taste it. This is the epitome of a dish that a rural Minnesotan would say “has a little kick” and everyone else would say is quite bland. And, trust me, they’d put an infinitesimal amount of chili powder in it.

In closing, watching these Trumpist fuckers sputter has been just 100% entertainment, no notes. They’re careening between “let’s talk about the issues” whenever they’re called weird, and “you’re the real weirdos” whenever Project 2025 is mentioned. It’s been a great ride and I don’t see an end to it anytime soon.

She is an Angel in a Polyester UniformPost + Comments (180)

Foreign Affairs Open Thread: Putin on the Fritz

by Anne Laurie|  August 16, 20244:55 pm| 69 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Russia

Putin - STOCKPILE

(Walt Handelsman via GoComics.com)

 

Putin is days away from saying that he’s going to build a wall and make Ukraine pay for it. https://t.co/SLH3PMcv1i

— Hal Sparks (@HalSparks) August 13, 2024

pic.twitter.com/yoUh8GMWEF

— Andrew (@sranysovok) August 15, 2024

What Ukraine’s Kursk Incursion Means for the Long War – Puck https://t.co/W7pr3hkukL

— Michael Huggins (@MichaelHugg2591) August 15, 2024

But seriously… Russian immigrant Julia Ioffe, at Puck this Tuesday, on “Ukraine’s Guns of August“:

show full post on front page

… The blitz recalled Yevgeny Prigozhin’s “March of Fairness” in June 2023, when his mercenary Wagner troops took over Rostov, the southern Russian city from which much of the war against Ukraine was being run, and made it halfway to Moscow without Russian government troops putting up much of a fight. (Prigozhin, you’ll remember, conveniently died in a plane crash last August, most likely after a bomb exploded on board.) So it was shocking to see, this time around, how little the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense seem to have learned from that caper, and how much arrogance seems to underlie some of the decisions to fortify—or not fortify—the Russia-Ukraine border.

A week later, the situation is still very much in flux, with neither the Russian or Ukrainian sides saying too much about it. (What they have said, though, is fairly predictable: glee from the latter and fury from the former.) Ukrainian forces now control somewhere shy of 300 square miles of Russian territory. But from everything I’ve read and heard, no one seems to know what the plan is—or if a plan even exists. On some level, it seems that this is a new chapter in the same book we’ve been reading since February 2022: the Ukrainian military, ever the underdog, does something daring that surprises and dazzles the West and looks amazing on social media; the Russian military is caught off guard and unprepared, which leads to an embarrassing loss; but the law of large numbers gradually catches up, Russia learns from its mistakes, adjusts, and begins to overwhelm Ukraine once again through sheer numerical advantage.

Are we seeing the same thing play out in Kursk? Or is this time different? Will it help Ukraine change the trajectory of the war, or even the narrative? I called my friend Michael Kofman, a military analyst with the Carnegie Endowment (who also happens to have been born in Kyiv), to find out. Our conversation, which I hope you enjoy, has been edited for length and clarity…

What do you think were the objectives of the push into Kursk?
My own sense of it is that Ukraine likely hopes to raise its troops’ morale and to change both internal and external perceptions of the war by conducting a daring and bold offensive of this kind into Russia. At the very least, it would help change the narrative—and it clearly has, at least for a few weeks—of what has so far been an overall negative trajectory for the war over the past year.

I suspect the actual objective of this operation is to hold some amount of territory in Kherson and hope to trade that for territory Russia is currently occupying—for example, the buffer zone they’ve taken in Kharkiv. Or alternatively, at the bare minimum, to entrench and use this buffer in order to pull in Russian forces from Kharkiv and other parts of the front inside Ukraine. Russian political leadership is clearly going to be furious over the prospect of a prolonged occupation of Russian territory, which ideally will divert some significant percentage of the Russian forces currently pressing the Ukrainian military along the front in Donetsk. The idea here, I think, is to create perhaps a larger but more successful version of the battle in Krynky—when Ukrainian forces crossed the river and held this lodgment for quite a long time in Kherson—a forced, attritional battle…

A lot of Ukraine's success here derives from a Potemkin normalcy Putin has cultivated since the war's start. No defense in depth fortifications even in border areas. Everything is fine. NATO will surrender soon. Go shopping.

Wagner should have been the wake up call. And yet… https://t.co/shSVuqLNJq

— zeddy (@Zeddary) August 14, 2024

Putin on the Fritz - STOCKPILE

(Jeff Danziger via GoComics.com)

Foreign Affairs Open Thread: Putin on the FritzPost + Comments (69)

What Does it Mean to Fight?

by @heymistermix.com|  August 16, 20241:24 pm| 274 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

What Does it Mean to Try? 1What Does it Mean to Try?

KamalaHQ is hammering Trump’s Medal of Honor comments yesterday at his New Jersey ex-wife burial ground and golf club, so I assume the Harris campaign thinks those remarks are pretty damaging.  Trump’s comments also clearly show that attacks on Walz’ military record have zero credibility from the Republican ticket, but I don’t think they were gaining much traction anyway, since they seem to have been replaced by false anguish over Kamala making fun of Walz’ white guy tacos.  (Again proving that the sensitivity of the white male to even the slightest of slights can never be overstated.)

Kamala’s comms team is very good, but Harris and Walz are also experiencing a moment where their excitement is feeding the public’s excitement, and the public excitement is feeding back into their excitement and energy.  This is where every campaign wants to be, a sweet spot where their momentum seems like it will never end.

Of course, this is rare:  a campaign can be doing everything right, yet they’re faced with an uninterested public.  Or, the campaign might have a message that would interest the public, but perhaps the candidate can’t deliver it for a number of reasons like age, poor retail political skills, etc.  That’s what I thought about when I saw this (from a Fake LBJ account that is written by some history profs at some university in Texas):

What Does it Mean to Try? 2What Does it Mean to Try? 3

What Does it Mean to Try? 4

I haven’t been paying close attention to Allred’s campaign, but let’s assume that fake LBJ is right:  Cruz is weaker than ever, and the Allred campaign is following a pretty worn out playbook.  The cause isn’t just money — they’ve raised $37 million to Cruz’ $57 million, and even though the concept of “enough” in political fundraising is hard to gauge, $37 mil is enough to run a decent campaign anywhere.  So if it isn’t money, is it candidate? Is it an unreceptive public?  Is it that Democrats often run very conservative campaigns in general?  I mean, whatever you want to say about Beto, the guy knew how to fight.

I’m wondering about this because the Harris campaign is doing something special and rare.  If Democrats are going to win in Texas, or Florida, or some of the other reddish-purple states that always seem to elude our grasp, we need to be able to replicate some of what’s led to this moment for the Harris/Walz campaign.

(Also, as usual, if there are Texans or people who know Texas politics reading this, tell me what I’ve missed about Allredl)

What Does it Mean to Fight?Post + Comments (274)

UPDATE: Kamala Harris Live: Raleigh, NC Rally and Economic Proposals

by TaMara|  August 16, 202412:21 pm| 56 Comments

This post is in: 2024 Activism, Elections 2024, Kamala Harris for President, Open Threads, Politics

UPDATE: See I go for a walk and they change the times on me. It looks like the Harris video time was incorrect. So the PBS  feed is probably of the rally, too. Which is fun, btw, because, unlike the Harris feed, they show all the opening speakers and we get to hear the DJ

Hey, let me know if you guys want more of these. Watergirl and I’ve been talking about how best to keep posting these. I’m happy to do it when I’m around and I know she’s keeping an eye on events, too.

But if they’re of no interest or feel repetitive, no need to coordinate the posts.

This is scheduled to begin in 20 minutes.

 

PBS has the feed for her Economic speech later today (2:45 EDT, 11:45 PDT):

I’m off to walk the dogs, so hopefully this will go off without a hitch (bwhahahahaha)

Otherwise, totally open thread

UPDATE: Kamala Harris Live: Raleigh, NC Rally and Economic ProposalsPost + Comments (56)

Populist Centrist What?

by @heymistermix.com|  August 16, 20249:54 am| 180 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

The Harris campaign has released their policy proposals [gift link]:

The most striking proposals were for the elimination of medical debt for millions of Americans; the “first-ever” ban on price gouging for groceries and food; a cap on prescription drug costs; a $25,000 subsidy for first-time home buyers; and a child tax credit that would provide $6,000 per child to families for the first year of a baby’s life.

[…] Perhaps Harris’s most surprising policy announcement was her plan to ban “price gouging” in grocery and food prices. While details were sparse, the measure would include authorizing the Federal Trade Commission to impose large fines on grocery stores that impose “excessive” price hikes on customers, her campaign said.

When I was visiting family in the Dakotas last month, there were no end to the complaints that the small grocers in our small town were gouging, and they were.  (Those complaining the loudest were, of course, the ones that were going to vote for Trump the hardest.)

…Harris endorsed a slew of measures to expand housing supply — including an expansion of tax credits to incentivize housing construction — but also a new $25,000 in federal down-payment assistance to more than 1 million first-time home buyers…

…Harris also pledged to work with states to cancel medical debt for millions of Americans, building on one of her signature policy issues as vice president. That effort could involve using federal funds to buy and forgive outstanding medical debt from health providers….

…Other policies endorsed by Harris in her five-page policy document included expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit for lower-wage workers by up to $1,500, as well as extending subsidies for Americans on the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

Anyway, this is all good stuff, and I’m looking forward to the whole list after Harris’ speech in North Carolina today.  But god damn are the brains of the people writing this story broken:

Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday unveiled an aggressively populist economic agenda, providing the most detailed vision yet of her governing priorities since becoming the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee…

In the weeks leading up to this announcement, at least two outside advisers privately suggested to the Harris campaign that she signal a move to the center by backing income tax cuts for middle-class households or a tax break for small businesses, according to the people aware of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private conversations…

“The days of pivoting to the center to win on economics are over, even though there are good economic reasons to do so, especially on fiscal policy,” said Bill Galston, a former Clinton policy aide.

Why are tax cuts for the middle-class “centrist” while caps on prescription drugs, elimination of medical debt, and tax credits for children “populist”?  Middle-class folks pay for prescription drugs, often have medical debt, and they do have children.  Middle-class 20-30 somethings can’t afford housing, and their parents really care about this issue.  A policy is not “populist” simply because a poor person could benefit from it.

How the hell is this framing adding anything to our comprehension of Harris’ economic policies?  The simple fact is that it isn’t, that broken DC brains think it matters whether some specific policy is “centrist” or not, and nobody else actually cares.

Populist Centrist What?Post + Comments (180)

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