Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The lights are all blinking red.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

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

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

T R E 4 5 O N

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

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

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

Books are my comfort food!

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

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Come on Wisconsin, Today is Your Day to Fight Fascism for All of Us!

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… and do what’s right for your state.

POLLS ARE OPEN UNTIL 8 PM CENTRAL TIME

Mobilize.us has WisDems phone banks to help GOTV.

If you live in Wisconsin,

VOTE FOR:

  • Susan Crawford (Wisconsin Supreme Court)
  • Jill Underly (State Superintendent)

VOTE AGAINST:

  • The Constitutional Amendment – big nope!

Consider phone banking!

Please call, write, or text everyone you know in Wisconsin.  I can give you contact info for Omnes and Mousebumples. :-)

Okay, make that everyone else you know in Wisconsin.

If you do social media, please share these far and wide.  We need to reach every single person in Wisconsin.

If they say it’s a landslide, make it a fuckin’ avalanche. VOTE CRAWFORD, SEND THAT DIPSHIT A MESSAGE, WISCONSIN IS NOT FOR SALE

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Florida Special Elections – Just 14 13 Days to Make a Difference

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Update at 5:56 pm: ANGEL MATCH IS COMPLETE! Thank you Redshift and everyone who donated.

Zoom With Four Directions Set for Thursday at 7 pm ET 1

April 1st is special election day in Florida to fill the empty seats of two grifters Trump pulled out of Congress to staff his regime.  These are safe Republican districts in ordinary times, and we would definitely take a pass.   But these are not ordinary times.

Boots On the Ground in Florida!

Florida special elections for the US House – is this a long shot or a potentially history making opportunity?

I would argue that it’s both.  Donate or volunteer!   We have just 13 days left for our dollars to make an impact.  

FL-01 is even more red than FL-06, so we have a better chance at winning in FL-06, but who knows?   Pick your own strategy – we have thermometers up for each seat, so you can decide.

FL-06 Josh Weil  (BlueSky)

FL-01 Gay Valimont  (BlueSky)

We have a new Balloon Juice Angel!

Redshift will match up to $25 per person up to a total of $500. He had some Tesla stock he had almost forgotten about, and sold it a couple of weeks ago, and it seems like poetic justice to use some of the proceeds here!

Thank you, Redshift!

Yesterday’s post, with lots more details.

Florida Special Elections – Long Shot? Or Potentially History Making Opportunity?

Meet the group that’s on the ground in Florida: National Ground Game

Short inspirational video from one of the founders below.   ⬇️

There are post-carding and canvassing opportunities – check out  their website.

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Florida Special Elections – Long Shot? Or Potentially History Making Opportunity?

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Update at 5:30 pm: We have a new Balloon Juice Angel!  redshift will match up to $25 per person – to either FL thermometer – up to a total of $500. He sold some Tesla stock h’d almost forgotten about a couple of weeks ago, and it seems like poetic justice to use some of the proceeds here!  Thank you, redshift!   ANGEL MATCH STILL AVAILABLE

Update at 2 pm:   We have a Balloon Juice Angel!  frosty will match up to $25 per person – to either FL thermometer – up to a total of $500.  Thank you, frosty!   COMPLETE

Zoom With Four Directions Set for Thursday at 7 pm ET 1

Boots On the Ground in Florida!

Florida special elections for the US House – is this a long shot or a potentially history making opportunity?

I would argue that it’s both.

April 1st is special election day in Florida to fill the empty seats of two grifters Trump pulled out of Congress to staff his regime.  These are safe Republican districts in ordinary times, and we would probably take a pass.   But these are not ordinary times.

Let’s talk about the two open seats and the candidates who are running to fill them.

   –  FL District 1 is open because Matt Gaetz (R-Pedophile) was tapped to be Attorney General – a thought so horrific that even Congressional Republicans couldn’t stomach it.

  –  FL District 6 was held by Michael Waltz, who will now help undermine our safety as Trump’s National Security Advisor.

To be clear, these are deep red districts.

Florida District 1  (FL-01)

District 1 (Pensacola and the western Panhandle) is the most Republican District in the state (Cook Partisan District Index R +19).  Gaetz retained his seat 66-34 over Democratic challenger Gay Valimont.   Valimont (D) is running again as the Democrat in the special election against Florida’s CFO, Jimmy Patronis.

It’s unfathomable that the loathsome Gaetz got those numbers, but he’s from a prominent Florida political family.  Patronis is not.

Arguably Gay Valimont has a better chance against a lesser-known and non-incumbent candidate.

Gay Valimont  website.

FL-01 Gay Valimont:  (BlueSky)

FL District 6  (FL-06)

District 6 (Daytona Beach) is a little less grim.  Cook has it at R+14.  However Waltz had a margin of victory similar to Gaetz in 2024: 66-33.

This time, a charismatic Democrat named Josh Weil emerged from the January 28, 2025 primary.

His opponent, Randy Fine, was recruited by Trump to run for the seat, even though he lived outside the district.  Carpetbagger much?

Josh Weil website.

FL-06 Josh Weil:  (BlueSky)

 

National Ground Game

Many of you have asked in the comments if we would do any fundraising or take other action to help win these Florida seats.  (Special thanks for this to rikyrah for the reminders.)  So here’s  your opportunity to donate or volunteer for these races, if you are so inclined.

Consistent with our “boots on the ground” preference, we identified and made contact with an organization that went all out registering voters in Florida 1st and 6th, and is now pounding the pavement to turn out voters.

Meet the National Ground Game.  The Ground Game dispatches organizers and canvassers in all 50 states.  We’ve made contact with Board Member Zoe Cohen-Sanchez, who is featured in the video below describing the organization’s efforts in FL-01 and FL-06.

Short inspirational video below.   ⬇️

There is not enough time to go through our typical process of meeting with folks from an organization, seeing if there is a good fit, trying to figure out if there is a way that we can help them do something beyond what they are normally able to do, and meeting with them again to work out details.  But we can put up thermometers to support their work.

This group will also be organizing for the open House seat in New York, and we hope to meet and talk with them as they begin to focus in New York.  But right now, the last thing we want to do is slow anything down, so we’re putting up the thermometer and they happily agreed to use whatever funds we might raise for the individual races.

Two Separate Thermometers & Volunteer Opportunities

We have two separate thermometers – that means that you guys can direct donations to either or both of the candidates.  You want to donate to the one where winning seems the most likely?  Donate through the FL-06 thermometer.   Want to donate to the longer shot, donate through the FL-01 thermometer.  Want to donate to both districts?  You’ll donate once through FL-01 and again through FL-06.

In addition, there are post-carding and canvassing opportunities (if you’re already in Florida), that you can access through their website:  www.nationalgroundgame.com

Is this a long shot?  What does victory look like?

Is this a long shot?  I would argue that is a long shot and a potentially history making opportunity.   Certainly FL-01 is a super long shot, but in this year, I think anything can happen.  Extremely low probability of an outright win in FL-01, but we’ll likely never see another moment where betting on  long shot like this, and winning, could literally change the course of history.

What does “victory” look like in the special elections?   If we win even one of them, that puts us one family emergency or bad case of the flu away from close Republican votes failing.

If we can’t flip either seat, is there victory to be found in substantially narrower margins?  What does that mean for the New York special election?

 No one knows.  Uncharted territory.  There be dragons.

But if you want to do something, here’s your opportunity.

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Where Do We Go from Here?

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Monday Morning MLK Day Open Thread: Mark the Day

The current state of affairs is disheartening.  It’s sapping my energy.  It’s undeniable that there’s going to be a lot more ugliness in the upcoming weeks and months and years.  These are dangerous times.

Our focus has to be on moving forward, because that is all we can control, really.  I’d like to hear your thoughts about how we can move forward – not in the comments in this post – but in guest posts from all of you.  In those guest posts threads, we can talk in the comments about the ideas proposed in that particular post.  If you have alternate ideas from what’s in a post, or you think something else should be a higher priority, please consider submitting a guest post yourself.

You may remember that we did the same thing with guest posts in January of 2021, only then we got to think about, and talk about, what the 4 previous years of Trump had been like, what the incoming Biden Administration meant to you, and what legislative priorities you wanted as the focus of the new administration.

This time around, the future is far less bright, but I would argue that that makes it even more critical for us to look ahead with clear eyes and share our thoughts about where we go from here.  We certainly have been sharing our thoughts for the past 2 months, but not always in a thoughtful way.  And with more looking behind than looking ahead.

California is literally on fire.  All the people who have lost their homes have to fucking figure out where to go from here.   At possibly the worst moment in their lives, they have to keep going even when they are exhausted, and they have to make a plan even when they feel like everything is lost. And for some of them, even some of our BJ peeps, everything they owned is is literally lost.

California burning is the tangible embodiment of our country on fire, and many of us fear that it may all burn to the ground.  But we have to keep going, too.  The world is not going to stop so we can get off, and sadly Obama’s time machine isn’t available to us.  I am working to accept the current reality, even as my brain continues to try to reject it as simply not possible.

Even now, when I think about how bad it might get, I’ll have a thought pop into my head that somehow the system will stop him.  That something will stop him.  We all know that the system we thought would save us doesn’t exist anymore, and where it does exist, Trump will try to hobble it.  So what’s left?  The people.  We are the ones who will have to stop or slow everything we can.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day.  He didn’t throw up his hands or rock in the corner when he hit a roadblock; he kept doing everything he could to change the status quo.  And he knew who his real enemies were.  The white laborers in the garbage strikes at the time – they were not his enemies – he found and made common cause with them.  And when he was killed, his followers also did not throw up their hands, and they dd not rock in the corner.  Or maybe they did, but then they got back to work.

It’s my hope that we can do the same.  I hope that a whole bunch of thoughtful BJ peeps will take the time to describe what the past four years have meant to you, what the loss was like for you, what Democrats should focus on going forward.  And why.  And how.  Please send your write-up to me by email as a potential guest post.

If you want to submit something for a guest post, please don’t just list things – pick a priority (or priorities) that are important to you.  Tell us why.   Explain what the goals are, and how you think we might get started.

There’s not one true faith, and there’s not just one reason for the loss.  It was a perfect storm in the most terrible way.  Some things clearly had more effect than others, but change any one of those things and the outcome could have been different.  But we can’t go back.

Just as there was not just one reason for the loss, there is not just one right thing to focus on going forward.  We don’t have to agree on which things had the most impact; we have to look ahead at all the key things that can influence the outcome going forward.  Not everything that had a great impact can be fixed in the timeframe we have ahead of us.  We can work on several fronts, and we can be allies with folks who choose a different focus than we do.  There’s plenty of work to be done.

There’s not one right way to play the hand we’re dealt.

I hope that you will all give this some thought, and if you have something to share with us that you will write it down, and submit it as a guest post.

If there are 10 or 15 different ways to move forward – or even 15 opposing ways to move forward – that’s fine.  That’s probably as it should be.  Different things will resonate with different people, different things will motivate different people, and each of us can choose where we put our energy and our efforts.

The future is all we’ve got.  The future of our country.  I think we have to fight for it.

 

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They Are All Mob Bosses Now

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They are all mob bosses now.  So brazen – they are confident that they can get away with anything.

Mob Boss Neil Gorsuch:

Don’t like your neighbor?  Don’t like how someone votes?  Now, in Georgia, you don’t have to just grumble about that.  You can request that they be taken off the voter rolls!

.

Lady Justice cannot be happy abut any of this.

In November, let’s show them that they’re wrong about that.

Update:  Drip, drip, drip, you bastard.  Maybe if you step down you won’t be prosecuted.

Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report a 2010 trip from Hawaii to New Zealand on the conservative donor Harlan Crow’s jet, Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon and the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said.

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— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) Aug 5, 2024 at 11:52 AM

h/t M31

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If You Only Watch One Thing Today

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If you only watch one thing today, watch this.  Powerful.  Inspirational.  Memorable.

If someone can find this on YouTube I’ll gladly embed it. In the meantime, do yourself a favor and watch.

Open thread.

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Black Women Are Showing Us The Way. Again.

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Busy week working, and I am back at it today, but I took one minute to check in on my buddy, the (fake) jack Smith.

Let’s model Taraji’s behavior, shall we?  We are not famous, but what if each one of us shared Project 2025 information with just one person this weekend.  What would the ripples be?

And if you didn’t catch the awesome poem by niqaeli torres in yesterday’s thread, go check it out.

Four Directions Wisconsin – We Have Angels, and Poetry!

She is right.  All there is is what we do now.  This fight is for everything.  Get up and fight.

Open thread.

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