Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The house always wins.

Naturally gregarious and alpha

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

A snarling mass of vitriolic vicious jackals

This is how realignments happen…

Wetsuit optional.

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Technically true, but collectively nonsense.

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

How has Obama failed you today?

This is a big f—–g deal.

Good luck with your asparagus.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity.

Yes we did.

This Blog Goes to 11…

Women: They Get Shit Done

Peak wingnut was a lie.

This blog is Obama’s Katrina.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Verified, but limited!

Gastritis Broke My Calculator

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

Too inconsequential to be sued

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Anne Laurie has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2009.

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: The Pollinator Series

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Sunday Morning Garden Chat: The Pollinator Series

From our indefatigable and gifted Ozark Hillbilly:

Call this the Pollinator Series. Every flower has a pollinator, some are harder to find than others.

visit the spires

deep dive

lurker

OK OK, that last one isn’t exactly classified as a pollinator, but you should see the pollen fly when he runs thru the wildflowers after the frisbee.

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

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COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Saturday/Sunday, July 4-5

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Late Night Sad Trombones Open Thread

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Not to pick on Mr. West, because he’s biochemically wired for the occasional grandiose overstatement.

Elon Musk, however, is hereby confirmed as a giant unrepentant dick.

Worsts July 4th party of the year…

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‘Independence Day’ Open Thread: Working Towards Keeping the Founders’ Promises

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In the early summer of 1776, Thomas Jefferson worked away in the second floor parlor of a boardinghouse in downtown Philadelphia. Wielding language he would call “plain and firm,” he set down the words that still inspire those seeking justice and liberation, “All men are created equal.”

But Jefferson, among history’s most studied men, didn’t travel from Virginia to Philadelphia alone. He brought with him an enslaved teen named Robert Hemings, whose life and contributions to history — like so many of his status — are stories of what we don’t know…

The eldest of six children, Robert Hemings was born in 1762 into bondage, contradiction and entanglement. His father was the slave owner John Wayles, Thomas Jefferson’s future father-in-law; his mother was a slave, Elizabeth Hemings. Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman with whom Jefferson fathered several children, was Robert Hemings’ sister, and Jefferson’s future wife, Martha Wayles, was his half-sister. Robert Hemings himself would become both Jefferson’s in-law and his property.

The Hemings siblings were brought to Monticello, Jefferson’s home in Virginia, not long after the 1773 death of Wayles. Within the plantation hierarchy, Robert Hemings held a high position and was described once by a friend of Jefferson’s as having “behaved exceeding well.” He was just 12 when Jefferson chose him to replace the 31-year-old Jupiter Evans as his personal attendant. He was dressed more formally than other slaves, was permitted to read and write, travel on his own and to learn a craft, as a barber…

Jefferson kept Hemings close to him until 1784, when, for reasons undetermined, he decided to leave Hemings back in Virginia while he moved to Paris on a diplomatic mission. Hemings, meanwhile, had met a slave named Dolly from another Virginia plantation, and, wishing to marry her, sought emancipation in 1794. “Bob’s business has been hastened into such a situation as to make it difficult for me to reject it,” Jefferson wrote to his son-in-law, Thomas Mann Rudolph.

Jefferson is believed to have freed around 10 slaves in his lifetime, Stanton says, and Hemings was the first, although Jefferson’s role was indirect. He allowed a French emigre in Richmond, Dr. George Frederick Stras, to advance him the purchase price for Heming’s freedom, around $200. Hemings, in turn, would work for Stras and pay off the debt. A letter from Jefferson’s daughter, Martha J. Randolph, suggests Hemings knew well that Jefferson was surprised and unhappy that he wished to leave…

By 1799, Hemings had apparently won his freedom and his name turns up on Virginia tax rolls. Documents indicate he managed a livery or hauling business, lived with his family on a half-acre lot in Richmond and named Jefferson’s son-in-law the executor of his will, which bequeathed all of his holdings to his wife and children…

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Respite Open Thread: Summer Pleasures

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Go to the beach!

Play in the sprinkler!

Maybe take a flight, on an impulse!


(Update: “Now if the owner can’t be located in a few weeks or so we’re told the pilot is more than willing to adopt the cat and give him a home.”)

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Election Year Open Thread: The Hate Rally At Mount Rushmore

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Robin Givhan, at the Washington Post, “Trump got his crowd and his fireworks, and peddled his fiction”:

… Mount Rushmore is painfully complex — much like America itself. The faces of four revered, but profoundly flawed, presidents were carved into the stone by a talented sculptor who sympathized with the Ku Klux Klan. The majestic monument — a testament to human tenacity — scars land considered sacred by Native Americans.

But the president is not a man of complexity and nuance. He is a man who sees things in gloriously righteous white and suspicious, dangerous black. For him, Mount Rushmore is not complicated. It’s telegenic. His was not an open-armed celebration of American independence and the country’s raucous striving to fulfill its promise. The president had orchestrated a rally — a place where he could wade into a warm embrace of approval…

He stepped to the microphone and settled into his speech, which was not a pleasing pep talk for a country torn into bits. Instead, he warned his Americans that other Americans were a threat to the country. “Our country is witnessing a merciless campaign to erase our history,” Trump warned. “One of their political weapons is cancel culture … This is the very definition of totalitarianism.”

He promised to save the monuments, to defend the monuments, to put the full weight of the federal government into protecting giant hunks of stone and bronze. And why not? It’s so much easier to cordon off a statue, to surround it with police officers, than it is to come to terms with the blood and the glory, the cruelty and good will that built this country and that haunts it.

Trump derided “social justice.” He referenced Martin Luther King, Jr., whose words have been so repeated, so decontextualized by errant politicians, that they’ve become rhetorical armor. Everyone claims King. Some stand on his shoulders; some hide behind him…

He will defend the Second Amendment and never defund the police. The former is part of the oath he takes as president; the latter is not up to him. No matter. They are his campaign cherry bombs.

The crowd chanted: “USA, USA.” The crowd demanded “four more years.” The president did not discuss the coronavirus, which has killed more than 130,00 Americans. The crowd did not seem to care.

Trump left the microphone with a promise to the crowd that the best is yet to come. If the president assured the country of anything on this night, with his buzzwords and generalities, with his us versus those other Americans tone, it was that the monuments would be safe.

He would defend the American fable, the mythology. The truth would go missing…

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: Independence Day

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J.M. Opal, history professor, for the Washington Post:

… It began in the mid-1760s, as hard economic times set in after Britain’s most recent war with France. To pay its creditors and reduce its debt, the British government imposed regressive new taxes and banned much-needed paper money throughout the American colonies. Sailors and tradesmen responded by rioting in Boston, which was full of unemployed men and war widows.

To their surprise, the beleaguered New Englanders found support from fellow colonials as far away as South Carolina, the only North American province with a black majority.

But after hearing white patriots demand “liberty” on the streets of Charleston, groups of enslaved men chanted that same slogan, sending local slaveholders into a long panic.

As the empire tightened the screws over the next decade, Colonial women began to renounce imported finery — London was the seat of British fashion as well as power — in favor of “homespun” clothing. The idea was to make the colonies more self-sufficient. “Women and Children, both within Doors and without, set their Spinning Wheels a whirling in Defiance of Great Britain,” noted one observer.

By standing up to the great men of England, these women often wrote that they felt “useful” and “notable” for the first time. They soon began to question old assumptions about female weakness and wickedness and to denounce cruel fathers and husbands as petty tyrants.

With rebellion in the air, the colonies became more democratic than ever before. In Massachusetts, people at town meetings looked past their traditionally parochial interests, telling their representatives to protect freedom of the press and stop the “unchristian and impolitick” practice of slavery throughout the province. They made clear that all authority came from “the body of the people” and that governments should advance the “general welfare” against arbitrary power and selfish individuals.

In New York, direct democracy by popularly elected committees replaced old patterns of gentry rule. Made up of a cross section of adult men, these committees didn’t just tear down royal authority; they assumed the ordinary work of governing, inspecting roads and taverns and enforcing fire and health regulations. For the first time, marveled a writer calling himself “A Poor Man,” ordinary people were “effectually represented” by accountable authorities.

In Philadelphia, workers and radicals rose up not only against British rule but also against Pennsylvania’s conservative assembly. They demanded voting rights and equitable tax and land policies. Among their leaders was the British emigre Thomas Paine, whose January 1776 pamphlet “Common Sense” urged Americans to look past their ethnic and religious differences and embrace the larger struggle: “The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.” That May, a huge crowd in Philadelphia sent the old assembly packing — the stunning culmination of a full-blown revolution in one of the most diverse parts of the British world.

By then, a good number of the roughly 2.5 million colonists were already committed to independence. One historian has found 85 small-D declarations of independence written before Thomas Jefferson’s famous version. These little-known texts came from towns in New England, counties in Virginia and Maryland, grand juries in South Carolina and one mechanics association from New York City. They turned particular grievances into a bold vision for a new kind of country…

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COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Friday-Saturday, July 3-4

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Another ‘grand theory’ rolled out for market-testing over the holiday weekend:

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Late Night Open Thread: It’s All A Game to These Monsters

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Despite the fierce competition, when it comes to the ‘Worst Person in the World – GOP Edition’, never overlook Matt Schlapp.

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Repub Stupidity Open Thread: Putting the ‘Ass’ in TexASS

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Because The ‘Rona Is Not The Boss of Us, they just doubled down, per the local ABC affiliate:

The Texas GOP’s executive committee voted Thursday night to proceed with plans to hold the party’s in-person convention in Houston later this month.

The convention, scheduled for July 16-18, will be held at the George R. Brown Convention Center, where roughly 6,000 people are expected to attend…

Thursday’s vote came hours after Gov. Greg Abbott ordered most counties in Texas to require masks in public – a notable turnaround for a governor who spent months resisting calls for such a requirement. Under Abbott’s latest action, Dickey said during Thursday’s meeting, convention attendees would now be required to wear masks for most of an in-person event.

Over the past week, demands have mounted for the party to cancel plans for an in-person convention, with some Republicans stating they would not attend such an event due to safety concerns. Others have also cited concerns about the optics of attending a large gathering while small businesses in their districts remain shuttered under the governor’s orders.

Meanwhile, a faction of activists has argued that canceling an event focused on selecting delegates for the national convention and voting on the party’s platform, among other things, would not reflect well on a party that dubs itself the party of personal responsibility. Some have also suggested that a virtual convention could disenfranchise certain delegates…

Legal liability notice, tucked into the middle of the story…

The SREC is scheduled to meet again Sunday to consider changing the party’s rules. Those rules will include a tweak that allows the party to act on an “emergency fallback contingency plan,” if necessary, to hold a virtual convention, party Chair James Dickey told members as he kicked off Thursday’s virtual meeting…

Earlier note, from the Texas Tribune:

… On Tuesday, Abbott granted local officials the power to restrict outdoor gatherings of more than 100 people, but made no mention of indoor gatherings. The Texas GOP convention is expected to draw about 6,000 attendees, roughly half of what it would expect for such a convention in normal times, according to Whatley. The party’s website brands its biannual convention as the “largest political gathering in the free world.”

Whatley said registrations are “increasing exponentially” as the convention nears.

David Lakey, the former commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, said he believes large indoor gatherings of more than 100 people are not advisable at this time.

“I think, right now, I wouldn’t hold a group larger than 100 individuals,” he said. “I think people need to be very cautious about making — especially in the month of July — any plans for a big conference.”

The party does not plan to require masks at the convention, though chairman James Dickey acknowledged Tuesday that Harris County is currently under an order mandating that businesses require customers to wear masks.

“The Republican Party isn’t considered a commercial entity so they themselves are not required to comply with the mask order,” said Melissa Arredondo, a spokesperson for the office of Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, who issued the mask order….

I’m beginning to think we need a new category tag for the next few months: GOP Death Cult.

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Schadenfreude / Growing Hope Open Thread: It’s *Not* So Good to Be the #FAIL King…

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Mel Brooks knew but half of it!

Gabriel Sherman: “They probably won’t have” the Jacksonville convention. The Joni Ernst campaign is angry at Trump’s horrible numbers. Meadows and Kushner are at loggerheads over Parscale. And if things don’t turn around by Labor Day, GOP defections may begin”…

With Donald Trump’s approval sinking to Jimmy Carter levels and coronavirus cases spiking across the country, Trump is reluctantly waking up to the grim reality that, if the current situation holds, his reelection is gone. Republicans that have spoken with Trump in recent days describe him as depressed and “down in the dumps.” “People around him think his heart’s not in it,” a Republican close to the White House said. Torn between the imperative to win suburban voters and his instincts to play to his base, Trump has complained to people that he’s in a political box with no obvious way out. According to the Republican, Trump called Tucker Carlson late last week and said, “what do I do? What do I do?”…

When the host is failing, the lampreys swim away. The NYTimes’ A team, led by Maggie Haberman, explicate “Why June Was Such a Terrible Month for Trump”:

… As Mr. Trump heads to Mount Rushmore on Friday to spend the Independence Day holiday in the carved presence of presidential greatness, he is suffering through the most trying stretch of his administration thanks in large part to his self-inflicted wounds. June represented the political nadir of his three and a half years in the Oval Office, when a race in which he had been steadily trailing, but faring respectably, broke open and left him facing the possibility of not just defeat but humiliation this fall.

In addition to public surveys showing him losing decisively to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in a number of battleground states, private Republican polls in recent weeks show the president struggling even in conservative states, leading Mr. Biden by less than five points in Montana and trailing him in Georgia and even Kansas, according to G.O.P. officials who have seen the data…

Yet as demoralizing as June was for many Republicans, what was less visible were the frenetic, and often fruitless, attempts by top Republicans to soothe the president and steer him away from self-sabotage, while also manipulating him to serve their own purposes.

Interviews with almost four dozen Republican lawmakers, strategists and administration officials about Mr. Trump’s re-election bid paint a picture of a White House and a re-election effort adrift, at once paralyzed by Mr. Trump’s erratic behavior yet also dependent on him to execute his own Houdini-like political escape. Most of those interviewed requested anonymity to freely discuss internal deliberations, and to avoid retribution from the president…

Letting Trump be Trump will delight some of his most committed supporters, but it is likely to dishearten Republicans who are already nervous about losing the Senate and yielding further ground in the House…

Official ‘Toddler in Chief’ collator Dan Drezner, at the Washington Post — “The beginning of the end for the Toddler in Chief?”

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Friday Morning Open Thread: Happy BDay, America…

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Kinda running with a theme, this week. Prove me wrong!…

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COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Thursday/Friday, July 2-3

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Schadenfreude Open Thread: #HeWentToJared

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Trending hashtag!


(Which is worth, admittedly, no votes come November; but we know Kushner & Trump both have staff diligently collecting every social-media comment about them, and we know it’s chafing two pampered pasty-white behinds. The bigger a liability Young Prince Jared appears, the more chance his Real Dad, the Squatter-in-Chief, will get annoyed enough to do something risible and hopefully disastrous. )

When Tucker Carlson (not to mention the horse-race Axios drones) think you’re a liability…

President Trump has told people in recent days that he regrets following some of son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner’s political advice — including supporting criminal justice reform — and will stick closer to his own instincts, three people with direct knowledge of the president’s thinking tell Axios.

Behind the scenes: One person who spoke with the president interpreted his thinking this way: “No more of Jared’s woke s***.” Another said Trump has indicated that following Kushner’s advice has harmed him politically…

The president also pays close attention to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. A few weeks ago, in a brutal monologue, Carlson blamed Kushner for giving Trump bad advice.

“In 2016, Donald Trump ran as a law-and-order candidate because he meant it,” Carlson said. “And his views remain fundamentally unchanged today. But the president’s famously sharp instincts, the ones that won him the presidency almost four years ago, have been since subverted at every level by Jared Kushner.”

It hasn’t escaped Trump’s attention that Carlson has recently been the highest-rated host on cable news. Trump, generally skeptical about polls, views television ratings as a kind of substitute poll, according to a person who’s discussed the subject with him…

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Proud to Be A Democrat Open Thread: Good for Senator Duckworth

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Make the Squatter-in-Chief own his crimes:

… Duckworth is a Purple Heart recipient and a former Army helicopter pilot who lost both her legs in the Iraq War.

Vindman, who received a Purple Heart for his actions in Iraq and later served as a White House aide on European affairs, is among hundreds of officers selected to be promoted to full colonel this year.

In February, the White House ousted Vindman from his post on the National Security Council. He had testified to Congress in November that he was disturbed by Trump’s call for Ukraine to investigate the president’s political rivals.

“Our military is supposed to be the ultimate meritocracy,” Duckworth said in a statement. “It is simply unprecedented and wrong for any Commander in Chief to meddle in routine military matters at all, whether or not he has a personal vendetta against a Soldier who did his patriotic duty and told the truth — a Soldier who has been recommended for promotion by his superiors because of his performance. . . . This goes far beyond any single military officer, it is about protecting a merit-based system from political corruption and unlawful retaliation.”…

Whether or not she’s Joe Biden’s VP choice, it’s clear she’ll be an important part of his team.

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