Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Militantly superior in their own minds…

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

This blog will pay for itself.

I can’t take this shit today. I just can’t.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

No one could have predicted…

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

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

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

This is all too absurd to be reality, right?

The willow is too close to the house.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

Saturday Morning Open Thread: NRA Parents of the Year Apprehended

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: NRA Parents of the Year Apprehended

(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)

Now the media circus really gets into gear. Per the AP:

… James and Jennifer Crumbley were captured in a commercial building in Detroit that housed artwork, Detroit Police Chief James E. White told a news conference. White said the couple “were aided in getting into the building,” and that a person who helped them may also face charges.

A Detroit business owner spotted a car tied to the Crumbleys in his parking lot late Friday, Oakland County Undersheriff Michael McCabe said in a statement. A woman seen near the vehicle ran away when the business owner called 911, McCabe said. The couple was later located and arrested by Detroit police…

Authorities had been looking for the couple since Friday afternoon. Late Friday, U.S. Marshals announced a reward of up to $10,000 each for information leading to their arrests.

The Crumbley’s attorney, Shannon Smith, said the pair had left town earlier in the week “for their own safety.” Smith told The Associated Press they would be returning to Oxford to be arraigned.

However, White said the Crumbleys “appeared to be hiding” in the building where they were found. He added that the parents appeared to be “distressed” when they were captured…

In a video message to the community Thursday, the head of Oxford Community Schools said the high school looks like a “war zone” and won’t be ready for weeks. Superintendent Tim Throne repeatedly complimented students and staff for how they responded to the violence.

He also acknowledged the meeting of Crumbley, the parents and school officials. Throne offered no details but summed it up by saying, “No discipline was warranted.”

McDonald was asked about the decision to keep Crumbley in school.

“Of course, he shouldn’t have gone back to that classroom. … I believe that is a universal position. I’m not going to chastise or attack, but yeah,” she said.

Asked if school officials may potentially be charged, McDonald said: “The investigation’s ongoing.”

If the Crumbleys hadn’t been white, and ‘privileged’, neither they nor their son would’ve left that school conference unescorted by armed security, I’m guessing.

IMO, the Crumbleys were ‘trying to escape to Canada’ the same way OJ Simpson was ‘trying to escape to Mexico’ — except that OJ probably had a passport, and a whole lot more cash on hand. In other words, they had a vague cinematic Butch-Cassidy-and-the-Sundance-Kid fantasy about disappearing into the sunset and never being seen again. Not very reality-based, but they don’t seem to have been a couple much into reality-based planning.

… Charging parents is unusual in a school shooting. A Washington Post review of 145 school shootings committed by children in the two decades after the Columbine High massacre in 1999 found that the weapon’s source had been publicly identified in 105 cases. In total, the guns those children used were taken from their own homes or those of relatives or friends 80 percent of the time.

However, in just four instances did the adult owners of the weapons face any criminal punishment for not having locked them up — and none of those prosecutions stemmed from negligent-storage laws…

A Post analysis found that such measures could have a profound impact, since more than half of the country’s school shootings since 1999 could have been prevented if the children who killed their classmates did not have access to firearms. And an academic study found that the number of gun-related accidental deaths and suicides among children and teenagers would drop by as much as a third.

One reason for the dramatic drop is that in gun-owning households with children, about 2 in 10 gun owners store at least one firearm in the least safe manner — loaded and unlocked. That would represent 5 million minors living in a house with an unsecured gun…

Saturday Morning Open Thread: NRA Parents of the Year Apprehended 1

(Lalo Alcaraz via GoComics.com)

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COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Friday / Saturday, Dec. 3-4

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Okay, it didn’t have to be the convention! They could’ve caught it anywhere in NYC — or while travelling there & back:

The Minnesota man who contracted the omicron variant of the coronavirus met up with about 35 friends at a New York City anime convention and about half have tested positive for the coronavirus, a state health official said Friday.

Members of the group traveled to New York from a variety of states for the weekend convention that began Nov. 19 and tested positive after their return, said Kris Ehresmann, director of the Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Prevention, and Control Division at the Minnesota Department of Health. It is not known whether they are infected with omicron or another variant.

“We don’t know if we’ll see a lot of omicron, or we’ll see a lot of delta,” Ehresmann said in an interview. “But we’re likely to see a lot of covid” out of the convention, which drew 53,000 people and tightly packed crowds from Nov. 19 to 21.

The development is not sufficient, by itself, to determine where people were infected, who gave the virus to whom or to develop a timeline of its spread, Ehresmann said. The man infected with omicron also spent time elsewhere in New York City. New York, Minnesota and other states, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are investigating the case and have begun tracing the Minnesota man’s contacts…

“The conference seems like the most likely spot because of the extreme mixing of so, so many people,” Ehresmann said. “It was just a very large gathering that provided the opportunity for a lot of mixing for many people across the country.”

The unidentified man flew to New York on Nov. 18 and his symptoms began Nov. 22, which would indicate a short incubation period for the omicron variant if he picked it up in New York, Ehresmann said. The man had been vaccinated and received a booster shot in November, officials said.

The man’s symptoms were mild and resolved Nov. 24, health authorities have said. He lives with other people, one of whom tested positive on a rapid test and is being investigated further, they have said…

Still be a while before this event catches up to the Boston superspreader event that first convinced me this was not just another short-lived viral scare:

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Wee Hours Open Thread

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I’ve been wide awake since 4 AM for some reason, so I caught the first news accounts when the cops nabbed America’s Worst MAGA Trash ParentsTM overnight. From the coverage, it sounds like the two really had gone on the lam. They were hiding out in an “industrial building” (possibly with the help of a third party) after withdrawing thousands of dollars from an ATM. JFC.

The TV talking heads discussing the case gave the impression that gunowners are alarmed that parents might be held liable when their kids go on a murder rampage. That’s another sign of how our sick gun culture has warped perspectives. Valued commenter Leto pointed to a comment by Biden’s first ATF nominee, David Chipman:

“If a parent provided their car to an unlicensed teen for a night of drunken joy riding, no one would be shocked if a prosecutor sought to hold the adults accountable.”

Exactly. It should be no different with The Precious.

Here’s a story out of India about a mother who doesn’t suck at her parenting job:

A boy snatched by a leopard is lucky to be alive after the animal let go of him when his mother gave chase.

The unnamed child, believed to be around 5 years old, was sitting in his hut with his mother and siblings when the big cat approached, according to local authorities.

The woman, who has been named locally as Kiran Baiga, jumped up and chased the animal while screaming, according to Y P Singh, field director of the Sanjay-Dubri National Park and Tiger Reserve in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

Recounting the episode, which took place on November 30, Singh told CNN: “The lady was sitting in her hut with her children when the leopard came. It took the child and started to run away when the lady chased him, screaming, and more people showed up, so the leopard let go of the child and ran away.”

The boy suffered minor injuries but is now fully recovered, according to Singh.

And she didn’t even need a gun to protect her child. Way to go, mom!

Open thread!

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Late Night Open Thread: The GOP Is No Longer A Political Party…

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… It’s a death cult with an outsized media platform. It’s monsters, and morons, and moronic monsters.

Some commentor recently took objection to the phrase ‘rooting for injuries’, but really — what else can we say?

Hoping there are no fatalities among innocent bystanders when the inevitable shootout starts?

Reminder: Kevin McCarthy publicly ‘joked’ about hitting Speaker Pelosi with her own gavel:

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2022 Pet Calendars Are Ready to Order!

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The 2022 Pets of Balloon Juice Calendars are ready to order!

Calendar A

Preview of 2022 Pets of Balloon Juice: Calendar A!

Calendar B

Final Preview of 2022 Pets of Balloon Juice: Calendar B! 1

Calendar proceeds  go directly to the pet rescue.

You can click this link to order or you can order by clicking Link to Order 2022 Calendars in the sidebar.

If you have pets in the calendars and have not yet reviewed the calendars, please do so before placing your order – spreadsheets that tell you which calendar your guys are in and previews of each month are in the sidebar.

If you find a problem, corrections can still be made.  But the calendar has to be changed BEFORE you place your order with Cafe Press.  The calendars are printed on demand by Cafe Press, and there’s no way to stop an order once you place it.

If you find an issue:

  1. Notify us in this post
  2. Wait for us to let you know that it has been fixed and that the calendar page has been updated
  3. Review the calendar again to verify all is good
  4. Then place your order.

Calendars are $25 each.  Cafe Press raised the base cost of calendars this year, and you guys swore a blood oath that raising the price by $2 would not affect your purchase, so we are counting on that.  Well, it looked like they were raising their prices, but they didn’t.  So we didn’t.

John Cole says: “Check the god-damn previews before you order.”  (Or he would say that if he knew we were this close to being able to order.)

2022 Pets Calendars!

2022 Pet Calendar A (Nyms A-K)
2022 Pet Calendar A (Nyms L-Z)
2022 Pet Calendar B (Nyms A-K)
2022 Pet Calendar B (Nyms L-Z)

Pet Calendar B Preview Pics & Layout
Pet Calendar A Preview Pics & Layout

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Guest Post: The Thin Black Duke – The Rittenhouse Acquittal Normalizes Vigilantes

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The Thin Black Duke published another smart, thoughtful piece on Medium this week.  Once again, I asked him if I could share it here, and he graciously agreed. ~WaterGirl

The Rittenhouse Acquittal Normalizes Vigilantes: An armed society is a society held hostage by sociopaths

by The Thin Black Duke, aka Darryl R. Scott

The moment Kyle Rittenhouse blubbered in court I knew right then there that he’d get away with murder because in White America only a white man’s tears matter.

CHICAGO (AP) — For many Black Americans, Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal on all charges by a Wisconsin jury on Friday confirmed their belief in two justice systems: one for white people and another for Black people.

Rittenhouse, the two men he killed and the man he wounded were all white, but the case has been linked from the start to issues of race and the criminal justice system.

Activists have previously pointed to differences in how police handled Rittenhouse’s case and that of Jacob Blake, the Black man who was shot by a white Kenosha police officer in August 2020, sparking protests in the city that became destructive and violent.

Of course it gets worse. Besides getting to goose-step out of the courthouse a free man, Rittenhouse was offered a job as an intern by U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and Tucker Carlston interviewed him as a guest on his TV show (“a sweet kid”). Trump says Rittenhouse visited him at Mar-a-Lago. It’s not just a slap on the wrist, it’s a collective pat on the back by his fellow white supremacists. Kyle, you’re doing a heck of a job!

Forget it, Jake. It’s America.

I guess the two men who died must have shot themselves, huh? By the way, their names were Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26. They’re not faceless statistics to their heartbroken families who have to live with this ugly miscarriage of justice:

Guest Post: The Thin Black Duke – The Rittenhouse Acquittal Normalizes Vigilantes
Parents of Rittenhouse victim react to not guilty verdict, photograph courtesy of nbc.com

“Today’s verdict means there is no accountability for the person who murdered our son. It sends the unacceptable message that armed civilians can show up in any town, incite violence, and then use the danger they have created to justify shooting people in the street.”

In Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, there’s a scene where Bruce Wayne and his butler, Alfred Pennyworth, are investigating the violent crime spree of the Joker and Bruce is trying to make sense of the Joker’s lunacy. This is what Alfred says to Bruce:

Alfred Pennyworth: Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

Angry white men in this country have been burning things down for quite a while now, while the apolitical “non-racist” white people who work in the fire department pretend nothing is happening and decide to look the other way.

Pay no attention to the arsonists behind the curtain.

A democratic society only works when its citizens fully understands what their responsibilities and obligations are and make the commitment into looking out for each other and their communities. That’s what “We, the People” is supposed to mean.
But the Rittenhouses in this country, fueled by their fear and hatred of the Other, are taking away the checks and balances, fail-safes, and all the other legal guardrails that keep a civilized nation from degenerating into barbarism.

Make no mistake, what these angry white men are doing is barbaric. Some men just want to watch the world burn. And their relentless hammering away at the crumbling bedrock of America’s democratic institutions is accelerating.

Dollar Store Rambos carrying AR-15s are strolling down the supermarket aisles. Teachers are either being harassed or terminated for educating their students about “CRT”, the latest boogeyman that’s scaring the hell out of right-wing zealots. Planed Parenthood clinics are vandalized. In spite of three viable vaccines available to everyone, COVID-19 is still killing people every day because Anti-Vaxxers refuse to get vaccinated. The insurrection on 1/6. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

Freedom of Speech isn’t guaranteed by the Constitution anymore. It’s dictated by how many guns you have. Coincidentally, it’s a sacred privilege that only white men get to enjoy (Second Amendment, fuck yeah!) and as Kyle Rittenhouse proved, he and all the other vigilantes in White America have been given the permission to shoot at any problem that they can’t figure out after fifteen minutes of googling.

This isn’t substainable, of course. And bad things always happen when a democracy is taken by a bloodthirsty mob to the back of the woodshed and shot.I found an online documentary called After Prison in which ex-convicts talk about their experiences, and there was one interview in particular that got stuck in my head and won’t go away:

“Every day is something different, but the one thing that remains constant in prison is violence. Violence is always there. It’s always there, and that’s what controls everything.

“When you look at Society, it’s the same way but people just don’t look at it like that. But you wouldn’t listen to a cop if he didn’t have a gun. You wouldn’t listen to the Army if they didn’t have tanks. You listen to them because they’re using violence and they’re using force and sometimes they don’t have to use it, but the threat is there. In prison you know violence is there so people respect that if they don’t respect you.

“You might not respect the guard but you do what he tells you to do because besides having the authority, he has that violence behind him. And when you’re in prison you have to deal with this every day.”

So when law and order goes away, all that’s left behind are killers like Kyle Rittenhouse, and they’re not afraid to use violence to get what they want. The day Rittenhouse didn’t go to prison was the day that everybody else in America who isn’t a crazy, gun-slinging white man got locked up in a cell instead. We’re in prison and the violence is everywhere.

And the bars are getting closer every day.

 

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Friday Evening Open Thread: TGIF, Truly

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President Biden has a cold, so you can safely ignore all the frantic/gleeful health rumors over the weekend:

Hope he’ll feel well enough to show up for the Kennedy Honors on Sunday:

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