Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Naturally gregarious and alpha

It’s a tarp!

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Militantly superior in their own minds…

Technically true, but collectively nonsense.

Yes we did.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

A snarling mass of vitriolic vicious jackals

I thought we were promised Infrastructure Week

Consistently wrong since 2002

Lighten up, Francis.

Hot Air and Ill Informed Banter

Word salad with all caps

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot

Peak wingnut was a lie.

An army of rabid, anonymous commenters

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Just a few bad apples.

Screw the Judean People’s Front. Splitters.

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

We Survived Breitbartpocalypse!

You are here: Home / Archives for Anne Laurie

Anne Laurie has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2009.

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Best News from the Super Bowl Promos

by | 118 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

Maybe I should tag this as a respite thread. But we deserve a break!

After David MacNeil’s dog collapsed last July and was given a grim cancer diagnosis with a life expectancy of one month, he took the 7-year-old golden retriever named Scout to the University of Wisconsin at Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, hoping for a minor medical miracle.

The veterinarians pursued an aggressive treatment that paid off: Within two months, Scout’s heart tumor was 90 percent smaller than its original size. Today, the lucky dog is healthy and all but free of cancer.

MacNeil, the chief executive of WeatherTech, the suburban Chicago manufacturer best known for its floor mats and custom automotive liners, was beyond grateful. On Sunday, his gratitude will be on display in one of the most coveted forms of advertising: a Super Bowl commercial.

The 30-second spot, titled “Lucky Dog,” is set to air during the second quarter of Super Bowl LIV on Sunday and tells Scout’s story from diagnosis to recovery as it spotlights the veterinary school at UW-Madison. The commercial ends with a call to donate, in which all money raised through the advertised WeatherTech link will benefit the school’s medical research. The school said in a statement that funds will be routed through the University of Wisconsin Foundation…

In a statement, UW-Madison notes that dogs and humans share similar cancer rates — about 1 in 4 dogs and 1 in 3 people will develop cancer in their lifetime — and similar tumor characteristics. As a result, some cancer therapies that were first developed for dogs are used to treat cancer in people…

 
Too, also:

… Jason Levine, Sabra’s chief marketing officer, told the Advocate in a statement that the company is showcasing a diverse group of people in its Super Bowl ads and is thus offering “something for everyone.”

Kim Chi and Miz Cracker are among seemingly unrelated celebrities who will be part of Sabra’s football promotional blitz. Another commercial includes rapper and singer T-Pain auto-tune singing about being ready for hummus before placing a hummus-dipped chip in his mouth. Teresa Giudice and Caroline Manzo of “Real Housewives of New Jersey” fame also star in another ad where they icily say one another’s name in a way only cordial enemies do as they feast on bread dipped in Sabra hummus…

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Best News from the Super Bowl PromosPost + Comments (118)

‘Centered in Wuhan’ Coronavirus Update, Tuesday / Wednesday

by | 12 Comments

This post is in: , ,

C’mon, you *know* I was gonna boost this! Per Deepa Shivaram at NBC:

As focus on the coronavirus intensifies, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is releasing a new plan on how to prevent the transmission of infectious diseases and better prepare for global outbreaks.

Her in-depth agenda focuses on fully funding global health agencies, investing in the development of vaccines and ensuring that health departments and hospitals are prepared to handle potential outbreaks.

“The best way to beat a pandemic is to prevent it from starting in the first place,” Warren’s plan says, “As president, I will work to build the foundations that help us catch infectious diseases before they spread.”

Though Warren does not specify where the funding would come from, a large portion of her plan revolves around funding organizations that would strengthen global health infrastructure. She specifically mentions fully funding the Centers for Disease Control, USAID and the Global Health Security Agenda, which involves 50 countries…

Of note, Warren makes a point to mention the importance of spreading factual information and countering misinformation in the process of combating global outbreaks. She says she will work with the private sector on this issue.

“Science will once again be in charge at the CDC,” the plan says.

The focus on science also ties into Warren’s portion of the plan that tackles the crossover between climate change and disease outbreak. Her plan folds in portions of her previously released plans on climate and adds in a focus on preventing spread of disease after natural disasters…

show full post on front page

‘Centered in Wuhan’ Coronavirus Update, Tuesday / WednesdayPost + Comments (12)

Pawns of the Powerful Open Thread: More ‘Headaches’, But Not for Commander Bonespurs

by | 45 Comments

This post is in: ,

I’m seeing arguments that the White House is ‘downplaying’ these injury reports so that Trump won’t feel ‘compelled to escalate in retaliation’, but let’s be honest — Trump has already forgotten the whole American-base-getting-bombed incident. There’s no way for him to spin the results as a win, and he’s too lazy / cowardly to start anything that might require him to focus beyond the next news cycle. Between this and Trump’s favorite war criminal threatening his former SEAL teammates today, the GOP’s “pro-military” reputation is getting flushed most efficiently.

… Several Pentagon officials told CNN that the number of diagnosed cases is likely to continue to change. Approximately 200 people who were in the blast zone at the time of the attack have been screened for symptoms.

Although traumatic brain injuries are not always apparent immediately after they’ve been suffered, the disclosure of injured US service members indicates that the impact of the attack was more serious than initial assessments indicated. Tuesday’s announcement is the third time the Pentagon has updated the figures for the numbers injured.

The Pentagon and President Donald Trump had initially said no service members were injured or killed in the January 8 Iranian missile attack, which was retaliation for the January 2 US drone strike that killed a top Iranian general.

Last week Trump said he does not consider potential brain injuries to be as serious as physical combat wounds, downplaying the severity of the injuries suffered in Iraq…

“No, I heard that they had headaches, and a couple of other things, but I would say, and I can report, it’s not very serious,” Trump replied during a news conference.

An influential veterans group demanded Trump apologize for those comments.

“The VFW expects an apology from the President to our service men and women for his misguided remarks,” William “Doc” Schmitz, Veterans of Foreign Wars national commander, said in a statement Friday…

Look, if these troops had superior genes, like the very stable genius squatting in the Oval Office, they’d have been smart enough not to be stationed in a war zone. Trump likes soldiers who aren’t wounded, at least if those wounds are potentially gonna cost Trump any political capital.

Pawns of the Powerful Open Thread: More ‘Headaches’, But Not for Commander BonespursPost + Comments (45)

Election Year Open Thread: “Fighting Back Is An Act of Patriotism”

by | 199 Comments

This post is in: ,

This Washington Post article is by Annie Linskey, who’s professionally hate-stalking Elizabeth Warren like Amy Chozik did Hillary Clinton in 2016, but this still sounds like excellent politicking to me:

… Before her town hall meetings, Warren (D-Mass.) virtually always holds a private discussion with five to 40 carefully selected voters, from those who are wavering to potential endorsers. At a moment in the presidential campaign when raucous rallies are the order of the day, the sessions provide unusually intimate access for Iowans who have emerged as the high-value targets of this final, desperate sprint to the caucuses: highly active but still undecided Democrats.

These “clutches,” as the campaign calls them, are just one part of Warren’s obsessively detailed organization in Iowa, one that reflects the candidate’s methodical personality and sets her apart from every other contender. As her polls take an ominous dip just days before the Feb. 3 caucuses, Warren’s big bet is that her unprecedented organizing machine will rescue her showing in Iowa, essentially saving her candidacy.

“It’s been a year of town halls and questions and a lot of selfies — it’s been a lot of fun,” Warren told Democratic officials Saturday at a gala in Scott County. But, she added, “there’s also been a part that’s not quite so visible: It’s been a year of organizing. It’s been a year of people on the ground.” And that, she said, “is how we’re going to win in 2020.”

And it has been almost microscopic. The campaign made a detailed study of almost all of the state’s more than 1,600 precincts to determine how to maximize support. It divided Iowa into nine zones and made an early investment deploying numerous operatives in each one, including remote towns and areas unlikely to support Warren.

To decide whom to invite to her intimate clutches, which last 25 to 30 minutes, the campaign mounted an extensive data-gathering effort to uncover not only who supports her but also who might switch under the right circumstances…

For Warren, the bet on Iowa and organization was made long ago. One of her key early decisions was to bulk up fast in the state, hiring 50 staff members by the spring of 2019, far outpacing all other campaigns. Early in the campaign, Warren’s team handed out stickers that read: “It all begins in Iowa.”

show full post on front page

Election Year Open Thread: “Fighting Back Is An Act of Patriotism”Post + Comments (199)

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

by | 217 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , ,

The Emperor's New Garments - Tom Toles

(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)

Tuesday Morning Open ThreadPost + Comments (217)

The ‘Novel Coronovirus’ Update, Monday / Tuesday

by | 20 Comments

This post is in: , ,

From the Washington Post:

BEIJING — As officials grow increasingly fearful about their ability to contain the fast-spreading outbreak of a novel coronavirus, this metropolis recorded its first death on Monday, hundreds of foreign nationals prepared to flee the country, and the U.S. government warned Americans to avoid all nonessential travel to China and planned to boost airport staff to screen nearly all passengers from there.

In a rare public mea culpa, a Chinese official said Monday that the government had mishandled the early stages of the crisis, which has claimed at least 100 lives and infected more than 4,400 people. Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang, speaking with Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, said his city did not release “timely and satisfactory” information at the start of the epidemic, and he appeared to blame higher-ups in his chain of command…

The mayor said 5 million people have already left his city, some before and some after the official quarantine. Meanwhile, more than 700 miles away, Beijing recorded its first death from the outbreak, according to the city’s health commission. A 50-year-old man who visited Wuhan on Jan. 8 developed a fever when he returned home a week later and died Monday — one of the pathogen’s younger victims. Seven other cases of illness in Beijing have been confirmed so far.

Late Monday, a top U.S. health official criticized Chinese authorities for not inviting U.S. and other international investigative agencies to join them in researching the new virus. While China has been more transparent than it was during the 2003 SARS outbreak, U.S. officials are still getting their information through press briefings rather than from direct transfer of scientific data, said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases….

Amid growing alarm about the disease’s fast spread, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is boosting staffing at 20 U.S. airports that have quarantine facilities. Vice President Pence said Monday that those airports receive 90 percent of airline passengers from China. Previously, passengers from Hubei province were screened and tested at five airports if they showed signs of fever or respiratory illness or have been in contact with a sick person, the CDC said. The expanded effort will take effect in coming days….

Global markets took a sharp downturn Monday as investors grew increasingly anxious about the swift spread of the coronavirus beyond China. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 454 points, or about 1.6 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500 and Nasdaq indexes were also down 1.6 percent and 1.9 percent, respectively…

IIRC, that’s about the same Dow Jones drop as one of the Oval Office Occupant’s more incendiary trade tweets, so not too alarming, just yet.

show full post on front page

The ‘Novel Coronovirus’ Update, Monday / TuesdayPost + Comments (20)

Lest We Forget: The Liberation of Auschwitz

by | 15 Comments

This post is in: , ,

As world leaders gather in Poland Monday to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi-run Auschwitz death camp in occupied Poland, Edith Friedman Grosman will be far away in Toronto. On Monday, the energetic 95-year-old, who was on the first official transport of Jews to Auschwitz, plans to live-stream the ceremony from home, but only if she feels up to it.

She’s already returned to Auschwitz four times, and that’s enough.

“I’m glad they’re doing something for Auschwitz 75,” she told The Washington Post. “But they have to do something in 100 years and 125 years, too.”…

They were told they would be registering for three months of work in a shoe factory, and that it was their patriotic duty to help in the war effort. But when they showed up to “register,” they were strip-searched, loaded into trucks and taken away. Most were teenagers, some were in their twenties, and a handful of mothers in their forties boarded in place of their daughters. None of those mothers would survive.

Over the next few days, Jewish girls were swept up from all the surrounding villages. By the end of the week, Friedman Grosman, then 17, and her sister Lea, 19, were on the first official transport of Jews to Auschwitz, arriving by train on March 27, 1942…

These young women arrived at a pivotal moment in the concentration camp’s history. At first, it had been a Nazi prison for Poles of every ethnicity, then for Soviet POWs. By 1942, the Nazis were focusing on gathering up Jews, though they had not yet started their “Final Solution” — mass extermination.

In fact, the girls’ real job wasn’t to make shoes, but to build the very infrastructure that would convert the camp into a death machine. Over the next year, they were brutally forced to demolish old buildings with their bare hands, empty trash out of frozen lakes and build dozens of new barracks. For clothing, they were given the bloody uniforms of dead Soviet soldiers and a few striped dresses with no undergarments. Their entire bodies were shaved, and their shoes were flat pieces of wood with flimsy cloth ties.

Most of them died that first year — of starvation, disease, beatings, medical experiments and suicide. Friedman Grosman’s sister was sent to a gas chamber after she caught typhus. More than 77 years later, her grief is still deep…

At her apartment in Toronto on Saturday, friends brought by so many dishes for Friedman Grosman that she worried she would have to throw food away. In between visits, she told The Post she had one message for the world: “Don’t hate. Because hate brings criminality and hate brings death. I saw it, I was there.”

Lest We Forget: The Liberation of AuschwitzPost + Comments (15)

Repub Stupidity Open Thread: Mike Pompeo, the Biter Bit

by | 141 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,

Secretary Pompeo had a cunning plan, aimed at an audience of one: He would summon this little reporter girl, berate her on air, expose her as a whining liberal snowflake, and shore up his crumbling credentials with The Big Guy in the Oval Office!

Tragically, NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly refused to play her assigned role in Pompeo’s dumbshow. And not only did she pants him in the media, but the more he tries to insist that he was in no way pantsed, the more other media co-conspirators snark, Nice boxers, Secretary Pompous!

show full post on front page

Repub Stupidity Open Thread: Mike Pompeo, the Biter BitPost + Comments (141)

Monday Morning Open Thread: Gonna Be Another Long Week

by | 188 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,

Something about those faces… the bright-eyed curiosity on the left, the blissful superiority on the right…

Elsewhere…


Iowa caucus-goers want a candidate who’ll offer them a bag of magic beans. But they must be artisanal, free-range, responsibly-sourced magic beans!

Think positively:

Mandatory Bolton content:

show full post on front page

Monday Morning Open Thread: Gonna Be Another Long WeekPost + Comments (188)

Sunday / Monday Coronavirus Update: Don’t Panic

by | 16 Comments

This post is in: ,

On last night’s thread, commentor Starfish recommended Dr. Tara C. Smith’s twitter feed. Dr. Smith has some very helpful information:

IMO, at this particular moment, the situation appears to be pretty good. There’s no widespread panic, the news media seems to have acquired some immunity to the OMG WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE conspiracies that flared around SARS and the last global Ebola outbreak, and the governments involved appear to be reacting, if not flawlessly, at least reasonably. Murphy the Trickster God willing, we’ll be watching similar reports for the next few weeks / months…

show full post on front page

Sunday / Monday Coronavirus Update: Don’t PanicPost + Comments (16)

Late Night Open Thread: When Fashion & Politics Intersect

by | 43 Comments

This post is in: , ,


I totally want this hat, although given my color preferences, red grosgrain would be more practical (for very specific values of practical). It would certainly improve IRL political discourse.

Lots of elegance at the Grammys tonight. Here is a lady who does justice to a strapless bodice — or, as a dear friend used to call it, ‘the dessert tray’…

For a tiny little chick, this is unexpectly effective. (And when her feet get tired, no need to look for a chair):

Edwardian era re-imagined — Fortuny pleating, massive chiffon poufs & a silver silk frock coat!

And, back to the Political Twitter angle:

Late Night Open Thread: When Fashion & Politics IntersectPost + Comments (43)

Sunday Evening Open Thread: SPACE FARCE (Again)

by | 94 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

From the Washington Post, “The ‘Star Trek’ vision was hopeful. Trump’s is the mirror image”:

… I thought of [Star Trek episode] “Mirror, Mirror” after seeing the Trump administration’s new Space Force logo, which the president tweeted out Friday with a characteristically awkward nod to our “Great Military Leaders” of the “Sixth Branch of our Magnificent Military!” (caps and punctuation his). Within minutes, the logo was lampooned widely for appearing to rip off the logo for Starfleet Command from “Star Trek.” Indeed, with the two logos placed side by side, the resemblance is so remarkable that I had to wonder whether Melania Trump was part of the design committee…

This somewhat comical appropriation of “Star Trek” imagery carries a certain irony. The universe of “Star Trek” has always provided a hopeful, near-utopian vision for humanity, where we have finally learned to set aside things like racial prejudice and gender inequality, and we all work together toward a common purpose and quest. Money is a thing of the past because no one wants for any material need, and we have united much of the galaxy in a peaceful assembly of sovereign worlds.

Contrast that for a moment with the current administration’s values and practices: racial resentments and fear stoked for cynical political purposes, the wealthy made even more obscenely so through grift and political influence, coarse and bullying behavior masquerading as diplomacy, to name but a few. Even the notion of a “Space Force” seems patently absurd coming from an administration where science is mocked and disregarded…

They’re deliberately doing a half-arsed job because they know it’s nothing but ooh!shiny! distraction for an elderly kleptocrat — and they want the rest of us to know that they know it. Ma Bell’s bastard offspring: We don’t care. We don’t have to.

Last week’s Space Farce PR Disaster, ICYMI:

Cold truth:

Sunday Evening Open Thread: SPACE FARCE (Again)Post + Comments (94)

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Memories of DC Summers

by | 149 Comments

This post is in: 

ET - Corner lot in DC

From commentor ET:

I am in DC so land is not so plentiful for gardens. I ended up on a corner lot and I HATE cutting grass, so I had some room for pretty things.

ET - Hydrangeas

I can’t claim credit for design and planting, but I have managed to keep it going for about 10 years so there’s that.

ET - Planned to Be Glorious

My favorite is the temporary phlox carpet – I have taken to describing it as phloxy. I have had people slow down and compliment me on it which makes me happy because a bit of pretty is needed in DC.

***********
Gorgeous!

What’s going on in your garden (planning), this week?

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Memories of DC SummersPost + Comments (149)

The Wuhan Coronavirus: Saturday/Sunday Update

by | 37 Comments

This post is in: ,

Mandatory reminder: What I’m posting here is what catches my eye, mostly from twitter. There’s (predictably) a ton of paranoid / xenophobic conspiracy theories (sample here from the NYPost, reposting from the Daily Mail, two major Western media outlets with established histories of hyping Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt).

It’s being reported that the State Department will evacuate some U.S. citizens, but only the paywalled Wall Street Journal seems to have much detail so far.

show full post on front page

The Wuhan Coronavirus: Saturday/Sunday UpdatePost + Comments (37)

Impeachment PSA: Schiff Will Be on Meet the Press

by | 51 Comments

This post is in: , ,

… unfortunately, the interviewer will be (Up)Chuck Todd.

Elsewhere:

Impeachment PSA: Schiff Will Be on Meet the PressPost + Comments (51)