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Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

So many bastards, so little time.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

In my day, never was longer.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

We are aware of all internet traditions.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

The lights are all blinking red.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

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Bring On The Meteor

You are here: Home / Archives for Bring On The Meteor

Balloon-Juice After Dark: They Really Are That Weird

by TaMara|  August 18, 20241:59 am| 65 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Bring On The Meteor, Weird

Please let this be AI, please let this be AI, please, please, please…

OMG there are more of them pic.twitter.com/RqQpnJ9fFl

— 🥀_ Imposter_🥀 (@Imposter_Edits) August 18, 2024

 

Image

Text: JD Vance Full Family Kit (and I cannot believe I just typed that)

This is going to haunt my dreams tonight.   Please someone tell me this is just some fake shit someone made and passed off as real. Because, just no. First it was diapers, then it was sanitary napkin ear pads, now this?

We have got to vote these folks out and pray they don’t reproduce.

Open thread

Balloon-Juice After Dark: They Really Are That WeirdPost + Comments (65)

Brilliantly Named Doctor Weighs In On The Pandemic

by TaMara|  March 20, 202011:50 am| 236 Comments

This post is in: COVID-19, Open Threads, Bring On The Meteor

"Did we get good advice from POTUS for the first 12 weeks? No. All we got were lies. Saying it’s fake, by saying this is a Democratic hoax…this is the most irresponsible act of an elected official that I've ever witnessed in my lifetime." https://t.co/bo6HgdFOBF

— American Times Film (@ExportedFromMI) March 20, 2020

If you were the president for one day, what would you say in the daily briefing?

I would begin the press conference by saying “Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Ron Klain—he was the Ebola czar [under President Barack Obama], and now I’ve called him back and made him Covid czar. Everything will be centralized under one person who has the respect of both the public health community and the political community.” We’re a divided country right now. Right now, Tony Fauci [head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] is the closest that we come to that.

Are you scared?

I’m in the age group that has a one in seven mortality rate if I get it. If you’re not worried, you’re not paying attention. But I’m not scared. I firmly believe that the steps that we’re taking will extend the time that it takes for the virus to make the rounds. I think that, in turn, will increase the likelihood that we will have a vaccine or we will have a prophylactic antiviral in time to cut off, reduce, or truncate the spread. Everybody needs to remember: This is not a zombie apocalypse. It’s not a mass extinction event.

 

I’m now following him on Twitter…as I pare down some of my follows for their hysteria, both political and pandemic…and introduce more reasonable voices to my timeline.

Yesterday we had a wild, wet snowstorm that took out my satellite, and boy did I need a break from all the news. I’m going to try today to pretend it’s still out and focus on other things. Later today I’m hoping to share a list of resources one of our jackals put together of all kinds of online concerts, entertainment, storytimes, etc.

How are you coping? Check-in and let’s support each other.

Open thread

 

Brilliantly Named Doctor Weighs In On The PandemicPost + Comments (236)

‘Tales of Thrilling Adventure’ Open Thread: Chris ‘Mad Bitcher’ Cillizza & His Talking Points of Derpitude

by Anne Laurie|  December 10, 20193:16 am| 12 Comments

This post is in: Impeachment Inquiry, IOKIYAR, Open Threads, Trumpery, Assholes, Bring On The Meteor, Our Failed Media Experiment

WATCH: Democratic witness Daniel Goldman perfectly explain the entire Trump-Ukraine scandal in 1 minute.

He then warns that Trump is as we speak still trying to get Ukraine to influence the 2020 election.

This clip needs to be on every nightly news show tonight. pic.twitter.com/62SJzLSoNI

— Nate Lerner (@NathanLerner) December 9, 2019

The whole thing — even for someone like me who gets paid to watch this stuff — was, well, unwatchable.

A bunch of adults yelling at one another over matters that almost no one watching understood or cares about. https://t.co/i2Fn83a8cx

— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) December 9, 2019

There’s a lot of dumb, “That’s how we got Trump” takes, but cable news viewing him as an exciting, TV hot break from normal, boring politics actually fits the assertion.

— Schooley (@Rschooley) December 9, 2019

If only there were some sort of institution that exists to explain current events and politics to help people understand and care about what's happening. https://t.co/uhgNSxY3Yy

— Tom Scocca (@tomscocca) December 10, 2019

The important thing is Democrats unveil their articles of impeachment in a manner that engages Chris Cillizza. Maybe with some close up magic.

— Schooley (@Rschooley) December 10, 2019

Someone asked me this afternoon what the point of the GOP’s strategy was today, and I said it was to generate this kind of coverage rather than coverage that provides information about the underlying conduct at issue. https://t.co/kHiXelkq8J

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 9, 2019

2/ The defense, such as it is, is to oscillate between "you don't have a smoking gun!" and "it was awesome to shoot him!" … Basically a separate article of impeachment for gaslighting the whole fucking country should be added to the list.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 9, 2019

https://t.co/kvhxzok8M6

— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) December 9, 2019

—@JeffreyToobin: "Let's be clear about what happened today. For years and years, Donald Trump has said the FBI and the deep state was involved in an illegal conspiracy … and now after years of investigation, the inspector general said, 'Not true. Didn't happen.'" pic.twitter.com/F3t1Sg9Ylq

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) December 9, 2019

<em>‘Tales of Thrilling Adventure’</em> Open Thread: Chris ‘Mad Bitcher’ Cillizza & His Talking Points of DerpitudePost + Comments (12)

Sad Trombone Open Thread: When the Poles on the Horseshoe* Snap Together

by Anne Laurie|  November 23, 20191:43 am| 139 Comments

This post is in: Election 2020, Open Threads, Assholes, Bring On The Meteor, Fools! Overton Window!, Go Fuck Yourself

One reason why Obama attempts to rally the base for moderates may be in his difficulty abiding a Democratic Party that even intimates that he failed to tangibly benefit the lives of the working class. https://t.co/z93AKXUzgO

— David Dayen (@ddayen) November 22, 2019

The Cosplay Socialists are determined to set up President Obama as the next ‘No True Progressive’ boogeymonster. (Hillary can’t live forever, and Liz Warren is just not ‘unlikeable’ enough for their needs.) As LBJ once said, “… it gives him a warm feeling, but nobody else much notices.”

But they will definitely work their hardest (wearing blisters on their thumbs, as they batter the social media barricades) to ensure that Preznit NObama never gets a third term…

… I’m sure Obama is confident enough in his political radar that he truly believes his path is the only viable one. It’s probably why he intervened to install Tom Perez over Keith Ellison as chair of the DNC. And he has been railing against imagined enemies like “certain left-leaning Twitter feeds” and “wokeness,” not just recently but for years. But there’s something brittle in this approach. A two-term president who engenders generally warm feelings among the population should not be so sensitive to criticism. Perhaps he reveals too much in his prickliness.

The truth is that Obama, who reiterated his comments to donors in San Francisco on Thursday, presided over a country where inequality continued to worsen, where dominant monopolies continued to consolidate, where regions continued to slip behind a handful of cities on the coasts, where all of the post-recession gains went to those at the top. Obama wasn’t the only factor in this sclerotic improvement; he was handed a deep recession by his predecessor and a right-wing Congress two years into his tenure. But those electoral losses, among the largest for a two-term president since World War II, do reflect the inadequacies of market-driven incrementalism to deliver accountability for the sins of the financial crisis and tangible relief to the millions who suffered as a consequence. If it did, the wealthy donors Obama spends time with while criticizing the left would have less in their bank accounts…

But let’s be honest about the endgame. Obama is intervening on behalf of a cramped, self-censoring politics, one that dreams big but fights small, one that comforts the well-off by assuring them their fortunes will be safe and the game will proceed to their benefit. He has said, according to the Times, that the eventual primary winner “will come back to me when they need me,” and they will. But they might not come back to his policies, and that’s apparently unacceptable…

This is pure fanfiction. (I know the genre; I wrote some of it, back in my late teens, when it was just us Trekkies & the term hadn’t entered into popular use.) It’s a little too dense and allusive for non-believers to follow, but that’s part of the appeal. We few, we happy few, who understand the Canon and cannot be led astray by arguments about ‘verisimilitude’ or ‘scientific possibility’…

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Sad Trombone Open Thread: When the Poles on the Horseshoe* Snap TogetherPost + Comments (139)

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Friday the 13th Falls on A Wednesday This Month!

by Anne Laurie|  November 13, 20195:14 am| 47 Comments

This post is in: Impeachment Inquiry, Open Threads, Republicans in Disarray!, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Bring On The Meteor

Spotted at Midlands Beer Garden in Washington, DC. (Reminder: 4% of this city voted for Trump.) pic.twitter.com/kD3zoIaAfU

— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) November 7, 2019

On what may be the last post of the old blogsite: Ave atque vale!

In case anyone missed it, Watergirl posted yesterday evening:

… As John mentioned, the transition to the new site will start somewhere around 6 am tomorrow. It may not start right on the dot at 6, and you are welcome to stay on Balloon Juice until the moment the old site is taken down. Who will be the last person to comment on the last thread on the current site?

So what can you expect for tomorrow? When you see a message come up on balloon-juice.com instead of the website, that’s how you will know that the process has started.

It takes awhile to count each of the 5.5 million comments as we move them to the new site. Okay, we’re not actually counting them, but you knew that. It still takes a long time to move everything over!

We are unlikely to have anything to report until at least 10 am, but John will provide updates on his twitter account whenever there is something to say. Anyone can view John’s twitter account at this link: https://twitter.com/johngcole…

Since I’m the backstage Unofficial Official Stress Tester, I’m planning to schedule a late-morning post on Erdogan’s visit, just to see when (if) it shows up on the new site. So you’ll have something fresh to look for, Murphy the Trickster God willing…

***********

NBC, CBS, ABC and PBS all plan to pull normal programming in favor of coverage of the impeachment hearings.

— Amy Siskind ?????? (@Amy_Siskind) November 12, 2019

Bill Taylor, the top US diplomat at the Embassy In Ukraine, who will testify publicly in the impeachment probe Wednesday, wrote an op-ed in Ukraine’s “Novoye Vremya” about the US commitment to Ukraine: https://t.co/qPVR6QXSzI

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) November 12, 2019

Deep dive into where Americans stand on various impeachment questions heading into first public hearing:https://t.co/rbPUodzkGg

— Micah Cohen (@micahcohen) November 12, 2019

“The Trump approach to impeachment is expected to follow his usual response to adversity: Flood the zone with so much content that no one can tell what it true, false, biased or just plain spin.” – ⁦@nancook⁩ https://t.co/TP1qLFTTlh

— Tim O'Brien (@TimOBrien) November 13, 2019

Does this defense usually work?

Defense atty: During the trial, I will demonstrate that my client is a moral abyss. In his mind, any action that feeds his appetite for wealth, power, & approval is acceptable & even good. Therefore, he can never form the requisite corrupt intent.

— L L Copp (@GretiaLee) November 12, 2019

I think the best way to get good coverage of the hearings that begin tomorrow is for some prominent Dem to write it all up in a series of emails, then get “hacked” and have those emails posted online so journalists can repeat what the emails say.

— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) November 12, 2019

Impeachment scheduling alert: Senate Intel Chairman Richard Burr says trial will last for "6 to 8 weeks." It will run for 6 days a week, from 12:30 to 6:30 p.m., a big chunk of time for senators also running for president hoping to be in IA, NH or anywhere but DC in Dec/Jan/Feb.

— Jeff Zeleny (@jeffzeleny) November 12, 2019

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: <em>Friday the 13th Falls on A Wednesday This Month!</em>Post + Comments (47)

Late Night Open Thread: Something Is Rotten, But It’s Not Denmark

by Anne Laurie|  August 21, 201911:31 pm| 80 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Hail to the Hairpiece, Open Threads, All Too Normal, Bring On The Meteor, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?

Look, it's not as if he's insulting our closest allies….

(touches ear)

I'm being informed that, in fact, he is insulting one of our closest allies

— William D. Adler (@williamadler78) August 21, 2019

no, really, how many women have heard some variation of 'all you had to say was 'no', don't talk to me like that, why are you so nasty?'

— Zeddy (@Zeddary) August 21, 2019

Jokes, flip remarks, and snark aside, here's the bottom line: A country that treats its allies like this won't have allies for long.

This is not because it's mean to treat friends this way. It's because it isn't in countries' interests to rely on people who are unreliable.

— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) August 21, 2019

Odds that Trump:

Knows Denmark well: 0%
Has many friends from Denmark: Also 0% https://t.co/5FmZTOZ1u6

— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) August 21, 2019

Maybe I’m underslept, but it’s deeply ironic to me that, on the same day that Trump reprises a vicious anti-Semitic stereotype, he goes after the only European country that proactively saved its Jews from the Holocaust.

— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) August 21, 2019

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Late Night Open Thread: Something Is Rotten, But It’s Not DenmarkPost + Comments (80)

{FacePalm} Open Thread: Greenland, Unlike the Trump Administration, Is Not For Sale

by Anne Laurie|  August 20, 20199:27 pm| 202 Comments

This post is in: Dolt 45, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, All Too Normal, Bring On The Meteor

Are you f**king kidding me?! THIS is why Trump scheduled the trip to Denmark?! pic.twitter.com/9TpZP6mgVk

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) August 20, 2019

I wonder if other national leaders will preemptively announce that none of their territory is for sale to ward off a possible Trump visit.

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) August 21, 2019

I bet Australia gets all smart and sells him New Zealand. When he shows up and finds out Australia didn't own New Zealand, it will be hilarious. Best. Scam. Ever.

— Bob Blaskiewicz✌?? (@rjblaskiewicz) August 21, 2019

Maybe we could buy Madagascar?

Or, better yet, the Puerto Ricans could offer to sell them THEIR island…

— 614 Bantam (@jpbach) August 21, 2019

Ok, is anyone around him, at the very least, a little bit concerned that he has lost his mind?

— Sighthound (@xifer84) August 21, 2019

“Losing” — ?!?

{FacePalm} Open Thread: Greenland, Unlike the Trump Administration, Is Not For SalePost + Comments (202)

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