Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity.

Forty-two’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

We Survived Breitbartpocalypse!

The Math Demands It!

We can agree to disagree, but I’m right.

Good luck with your asparagus.

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot

I showered with Rahm and all I got was this shitty blog.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense.

Gastritis Broke My Calculator

Shock troops for the Unitarian Jihad.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

This is a big f—–g deal.

Almost as fun as hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Usually wrong but never in doubt.

This is how realignments happen…

Naturally gregarious and alpha

We have all the best words.

An army of rabid, anonymous commenters

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Just a few bad apples.

Lighten up, Francis.

I thought we were promised Infrastructure Week

Cat Rescue Transport Bleg (Minneapolis MN to Arlington, VA)

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Remember this feral guy who needed a permanent home? Commentor TomatoQueen in Virginia stepped up, so now he needs to get from Minneapolis to Virginia. New message from commentor Edith:

Black Kitty had a clean vet visit this week, and will be ready to travel to his new home after his neuter. The current plan is to schedule his surgery as close to transport date as possible, and then have him stay at the vet until pick-up.

I’m hoping the Balloon-Juice community can help get him from Minneapolis to Arlington, VA. I know a few people in the comments offered to drive, although I wouldn’t want to call them out in a front page post in case it doesn’t work for them now.

I’ve gotten some quotes on transport that range from $750 to $900. I also know that some commenters have closer ties to non-profit groups that might work too. This is all new to me, so basically I’d like to throw it out to the jackal hive mind for help.

You guys know the drill: If you have suggestions about the best transport methods, leave a comment below. Once we’ve got a firmer date and cost quote, I’ll have another post, ask people who want to donate to email me, and I’ll forward Edith’s PayPal-or-similar address to each of you directly. (After I chip in a little myself, of course!)

Cat Rescue Transport Bleg (Minneapolis MN to Arlington, VA)Post + Comments

Twitter & Facebook, embedded tweets, status of @nym in replies, and more

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This post will be a bit of a hodgepodge of items that are all related to the new site.

Twitter & Facebook

I will be working on testing images this afternoon – as they relate to sharing Balloon Juice on Facebook and Twitter.  There are two reasons for mentioning this 1) to ask whether there might be 3 or 4 or 5 of you who are experienced with sharing sites on Twitter and and Facebook) and might be willing to test it out as I make changes this afternoon, and 2) to alert anyone who might already be sharing Balloon Juice posts on twitter or facebook that images that show up in social media for Balloon Juice will be changing this afternoon as we are testing.

If you are an experienced as social media sharing and are game to assist in this testing, please speak up in the comments or send email to watergirl at balloon-juice.com – thanks!

Embedded Tweets

As of Friday afternoon, it appeared that we had all of these twitter issues resolved:

  • Front pagers unable to embed tweets in front page posts
  • Twitter embed issues for front pagers in comments  (You are blocked!!)
  • Twitter embed issues for commenters  (You are blocked!!!)

Additional Issues

We believe these issues were also resolved on Friday afternoon

  • Images showing up as ? in a post
  • Nyms sometimes not showing up in the reply box the first time you hit reply
  • Occasional comments not showing up until you posted a follow-up comment or manually refreshed
  • Back arrow not working as expected

Before we close the book on those issues, I am asking for confirmation from you guys that those are indeed fixed for you.

If you have experienced one or more of those problems since Friday at 7pm Eastern time, please let me know that, too.  Please include  specific information about the device(s), operating systems and browsers where any of the specific issue might still be occurring.

Site Feedback

Thanks to everyone who has been clicking on Site Feedback and either submitting feedback or reporting a problem.  I really appreciate it.  I read every one as it comes in, and I tend to follow up immediately if I have a follow-up question or there is a quick answer.  Other than that, I prioritized based on fixing things that affected the most people.  Today and tomorrow, I will be making a second pass through everything that has been submitted so far.

Edit: I had out-of-town company here on this weekend, so while I was checking email and Site Feedback submissions, I wasn’t able to read Balloon Juice, so I am not up-to-date on anything the was in the comments.

On The Road - Wolvesvalley - Birds

 

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Russiagate Open Thread: Nothing Says ‘Holiday Cheer’ Like Setting Up An Extortion Scheme

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… At least, if you’re a member of the Trump Crime Cartel:

Among the many guests who had their pictures taken with President Donald Trump at the White House’s annual Hanukkah party last year were two Soviet-born businessmen from Florida, Lev Parnas and Igor  Fruman. 
In the picture, which Parnas posted on social media, he and Fruman are seen smiling alongside Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Rudy Giuliani, the President’s personal lawyer.
At one point during the party that night, Parnas and Fruman slipped out of a large reception room packed with hundreds of Trump donors to have a private meeting with the President and Giuliani, according to two acquaintances in whom Parnas confided right after the meeting…
Eventually, according to what Parnas told his confidants, the topic turned to Ukraine that night. According to those two confidants, Parnas said that “the big guy,” as he sometimes referred to the President in conversation, talked about tasking him and Fruman with what Parnas described as “a secret mission” to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter…
To Parnas, the chain of command was clear: Giuliani would issue the President’s directives while Parnas, who speaks fluent Russian, would be an on-the-ground investigator alongside Fruman, who has numerous business contacts in Ukraine.
“Parnas viewed the assignment as a great crusade,” says one of the people in whom Parnas confided. “He believed he was doing the right thing for Trump.”
The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment to a series of questions regarding the meeting and Trump’s relationship with Parnas and Fruman…click below to see the entire post

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Sunday Open Thread

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Looks like we need another one. Here are a few items from the morning news:

  • David Holmes, the guy who overheard Trump when he called Sondland in a restaurant, spilled a lot more than that.
  • Trump made an unscheduled visit to Walter Reed yesterday, supposedly to start his yearly physical. Today the White House said he’s not going anywhere. Speculation runs rampant about some kind of cardiac event, but there are a lot of things elderly men with poor diets might suffer from – my guess is he needed a manual fecal disimpaction.
  • Tedra Cobb, Elise Stefanik’s opponent in NY-22, just blew past $800K in donations.

Sound off on this or other issues in the comments.

Sunday Open ThreadPost + Comments

Sunday Morning Open Thread: I Give Up

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So… for the last couple days, getting tweets to show up in my posts has ranged from ‘problematic’ to ‘impossible.’

For a brief shining moment between midnight Saturday and 3:30am Sunday, EST, things were back to normal, only better — both embeds *and* links showed up as full visual tweets!

I made the mistake of leaving my computer for a few minutes, so (of course) between 3:45-5:15am neither method worked.

I was setting up this EMOT (Early Morning Open Thread) with a stripped-out image from Meg Elison’s tweet, since nobody sent me any garden-related photos this week… and the twitter function started working again.

I know my limits, guys. Time to quit while I’m ahead. See you later, after I get some sleep.

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Impeachment Inquiry Open Thread: Watching History in Real Time

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… Whether Americans ultimately come to believe that the President’s alleged misconduct merits the terrible sanction of removal or come to believe the Democratic impeachment attempt is narrowly political and unjustified, this was a clarifying day.
At a time of swirling misinformation, propagandistic pro-Trump news coverage and conspiracy theories, it showed that while facts may be under assault, they can ultimately still emerge in a way that will allow history to render a judgment even if the fractured political climate makes that it impossible in the moment.
Friday piled more testimony on the mountain of evidence suggesting that the US is in the grip of not just the most unorthodox, but the most corrupt presidency of the modern era.click below to see the entire post

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Look To Who You Are Not Allowed To Criticize

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We are there.

 

Craig Silverman, a former chief deputy district attorney in Denver and talk-show host on the conservative 710 KNUS radio station, said he was fired mid-show Saturday after criticizing President Donald Trump.

Silverman was in the middle of a segment about Roy Cohn, Trump’s former personal attorney, when he suddenly was interrupted by network news, he told The Denver Post.

Silverman’s producer threw his hands up in the air, indicating it wasn’t him.

Instead, program director Kelly Michaels came through the door.   “You’re done,” Silverman recounted Michaels as saying.

 

Open thread

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John Bel Edwards, Democrat, Reelected Governor In Louisiana

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Donald Trump did a rally for his rival yesterday.

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Friday Saturday Recipe Exchange: Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

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chocolate chocolate chip cookies

As predicted, yesterday was too, too crazy for a recipe thread. Trying tonight instead. It’s never too early to start thinking about holiday food trays, boxes, and bags. I have an entire section dedicated to making sweet and salty treats here.

I had to go to a funeral and wanted to take something sweet. I find chocolate helps. Lots of chocolate.

I don’t make these very often, because they are super rich and my Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies are usually enough.

They’re easy and just a touch above regular chocolate chip cookies.  This is a full batch, makes about 4 dozen cookies. Great for your holiday cookie boxes.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

  • 1 cup + 2 tbsp butter
  • 1 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • dash of salt
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
  • 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1 cup nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds or peanuts), chopped

mixing bowl and cookie sheet

Preheat oven to 350 degrees (the lower temperature is because dark cookies can burn easily)

Cream together butter and sugars.  Add eggs and vanilla, mixing well.  Sift together salt, soda, flour and cocoa, then add to butter mixture, blending well.  Add nuts and chocolate chips.  Spoon onto cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

Cool on the cooling rack.

What’s on your menu this weekend? Anyone have special requests for the Thanksgiving recipe exchange? Hit the comments to share your recipes, gift ideas, holiday requests or whatevah…

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Trolls 1, John Cole 0: Revisiting the Commenting policy

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The commenting policy as laid out on Thursday is as follows:

Things that will get you an immediate timeout:

1.) Sexism, racism, ageism; homophobic outbursts, targeting of marginalized groups, etc. We’re not going to put up with personal attacks beyond a joking nature, nor will we tolerate targeted harassment of commenters. Take your shit somewhere else.
2.) Explicit calls for violence. Obviously things said in jest such as “guillotines” or nonsense like that are recognized for the hyperbole they are. But direct, actionable threats or calls for violence are out, for obvious reasons.
3.) Targeted harassment of other commenters or front pagers.
4.) Intentional disinformation campaigns.
5.) Posting links to inappropriate websites or sites that compromise a user’s security.
6.) Divulging personal information about a commenter or front pager (real name, address, place of work, etc.)
7.) I am sure you idiots will think of something else so I will just leave this here.

Apparently we need to discuss, in detail, item #4. Intentional disinformation campaigns include anything that is known to be false with the slightest bit of knowledge and or research. These include things like:

1.) Obama is a Kenyan Muslim.
2.) Climate change is a hoax.
3.) Vaccines cause autism.
4.) The world is flat.
5.) Nicotine is not addictive.
6.) Iraq had WMD
7.) The DNC stole the 2016 election from Bernie
8.) Chemtrails
9.) Seth Rich was murdered by the DNC
10.) Sandy Hook was a false flag operation.

Etc. You get the idea. Also, another example of said behavior is the right wing (and lunatic fringe left) claim that there was no Russian interference in the 2016 election. There was. That is undeniable.

The only thing really up for debate is he extent of HOW MUCH COOPERATION the Russians received from the campaign, because the President and those around him have lied repeatedly about it (and are now convicted felons in several cases).

Take that bullshit to reddit or 8chan or whatever.

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Check Out the Giant Brass Balls on G. Gordon Shitty’s Daughter

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Roger Stone has been breaking the law for decades, and were he a black man, he’d be serving life for the drug offenses alone. But now he has finally been convicted for a small portion of his lifetime of criminality and not even spent one fucking hour in jail, and of course his spawn is rushing to state tv at Fox to shed some white lady tears:

Fuck her, fuck him, and fuck Tucker Carlson. And Carlson’s open about how the “Russia hoax destroying lives” is priceless, coming from the fucking asshole who peddled Seth Rich conspiracy theories and was giddy about throwing Susan McDougal in jail to rot.

Fuck these people.

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Saturday Afternoon Open Thread

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This is a rerun of a tweet from yesterday, when the incident happened, but I think it bears repeating. This 14-pound dog, appearing blurry in the photograph because he can’t hold still unless he’s asleep…

…utterly destroyed the tennis ball-like dog toy pictured at right inside of five minutes:

I think I’ll make a gift of the surviving toy balls to a dog who isn’t part gator.

On a related note, can you recommend any dog toy products that can withstand the assault of a beast with such pointy teeth and impressive jaw strength? If so, please share in comments.

Open thread!

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Andrew Yang’s Dangerous Idea

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Andrew Yang has released a plan for Internet regulation. Some of it is good, some of it is anodyne, and some of it is terrible. You may wonder why I’ve chosen to write about this, since he’s not going to be the nominee. Two reasons: one, we should all be talking about this stuff more. Two, his plan is a great example of how Americans go astray when thinking about regulating tech companies.

From his website, we can start with the good:

Regulate the use of data and privacy by establishing data as a property right. The associated rights will enable individuals to retain ownership and share in the economic value generated by their data.

Wonderful! Big fan. I used to work at a startup that sought to enable customers to do this. Alas, it failed because investors thought that our user base would only be the Very Online™, and the sorts of people who want to hide things. Without widespread adoption (or government regulation), this doesn’t work.

Then we have the “sure, alright, I could see that working out”:

Minimize health impacts of modern tech on our people, particularly our children. I will create a Department of the Attention Economy that focuses on smartphones, social media, gaming, and apps, and how to responsibly design and use them, including age restrictions and guidelines.

He proposes things like “removing autoplay video for children under 16,” though personally I’d like to see that apply to children under 116. This one also contains stupider bullet points like “removing the queues that allow infinite scrolling,” which would be laughably easy to work around, if anybody can even figure out what it means.

And then we reach his dangerous ideas, which many politicians across the spectrum like, and which represent a particular failure mode in American regulatory thought.

click below to see the entire post

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Mississippi Is #1 In Something

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And it doesn’t involve sports, illiteracy or obesity:

More than half the states in America have seen a decline over the past decade in the take-up rates among kindergarten children of vaccines against diseases such as measles, mumps, hepatitis B and polio, as unfounded anti-vaccination theories have spread.

A new study by Health Testing Centers has found between 2009 and 2018 27 of the 50 US states experienced a drop in the percentage of vaccinated kindergarten-age children. In Georgia and Arkansas, the decline was more than 6%.

The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR), which is the focus of much activity by the so-called anti-vaxxer movement, is especially vulnerable. Alarmingly, the study finds that more than half of the states – 26 in total – have vaccination rates that have fallen below the target of 95% which experts state is needed to provide maximum protection against the diseases.

Three states – Colorado (88.7%), Kansas (89.1%) and Idaho (89.5%) – have rates that have fallen below the 90% that scientists say renders populations particularly vulnerable to a measles outbreak.

[…] Mississippi stands at the top of the league table for MMR, with 99.4% of its kindergartners vaccinated.

States other than Mississippi can send their thank you cards and other plaudits to Robert Kennedy Jr and some crank named Larry Cook, cc Mark Zuckerberg, since Kennedy and Cook have purchased the majority of the anti-vaxx ads on Facebook, which, of course, accepts them since they have no corporate policy other than the creation and maintenance of stupidity among users of their shitty app.

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Keep Your Mouth Shut and Your Bowels Open

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If I’m a Republican Member of Congress, after yesterday’s show, I’d be searching for ways to keep quiet. Let’s revisit the case of Elise Stefanik. After she decided to throw away her dubious credentials as a moderate by participating in a stunt and following it up with some transparent lies, her opponent raised $150K on ActBlue:

As of the last report, Cobb had $500K cash on hand, compared to Stefanik’s $1.3M. At this point in the race, an unexpected $150K or $200K for Cobb is huge, as is the massive amount of free (negative) media that’s raining down on Stefanik. This is Cobb’s second run, which is also important – when you’re underfunded and unknown, it takes at least a cycle for you to be introduced to the district.

After Stefanik flushed her reputation down the Ways and Means Committee Room toilet, Trump pardoned war criminals, and this came out:

Donald Trump personally kept up pressure on Ukraine to carry out investigations he had requested in a phone call with a senior US diplomat, who then observed the president did not “give a shit” about Ukraine and only cared about what would benefit him politically, according to dramatic new testimony in congressional impeachment hearings.

In a deposition to the House committees investigating the Ukraine scandal, David Holmes, a diplomat at the US embassy in Kiev, described an extraordinary phone call between Trump and the US ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, on 26 July. […]

Sondland, a wealthy hotelier who donated $1m to Trump’s inauguration celebration, assured Trump that Zelenskiy “loves your ass”.

I have to imagine that Trump’s pardon didn’t go down especially well with the active duty soldiers at Ft. Drum or the retired military in the surrounding Watertown area, both in Stefanik’s district. I suppose some of them are in pretty deep with Trump, but I’ll bet a lot of them have the same reaction as Cole did last night, especially since the pardons were mainly about signaling Roger Stone that help was on the way.

And what stunt could possibly work when Sondland testifies next week? Feigning shock at the language? More bullshit about the whistle blower? I’m sure the brain trust surrounding Nunes will come up with something else, but it will probably be even weaker than Stefanik’s stunt yesterday, if that’s even conceivable.

Gym Jordan can spend a lot of time loving the President’s ass from his R+14 safe seat, but Stefanik does not have that luxury in R+4 NY-21. Yet she chose to go all in on her weak hand yesterday. I hope she busts.

Update: I forgot to add that this news dropped yesterday, too. Apparently Parnas, one of the Chucklefuck twins, is cooperating and will talk about a meeting with Trump where he sent Parnas and Fruman on a “secret mission” to Ukraine.

Keep Your Mouth Shut and Your Bowels OpenPost + Comments