Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Something seems odd about that, but i have been drinking.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

There’s some extremely good trouble headed their way.

The math demands it!

Everybody saw this coming.

I’m only here for the duck photos.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

All this crying. this is why i don’t click on stuff.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Good luck with your asparagus.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

How does anyone do Gilligan’s Island as trump world and not cast Jared as Gilligan?

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

Too inconsequential to be sued

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

The house always wins.

This really is a full service blog.

Just a few bad apples.

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

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John Cole started Balloon Juice early in 2002. Those who have followed along know that this has been quite the journey.

Time Flies, Doesn’t It?

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I had an early dental appointment this morning. Getting a deep cleaning of my teeth since I have not been in for almost two years because of the pandemic, and last Friday I woke up and discovered the crown on my molar was missing and is presumably now with the mustard somewhere in the aether. At any rate, I was out of the house bright and early, and as I opened the front door I observed that the Penthouse Suite nest on the front porch had been demolished:

Time Flies, Doesn't It?

All that remains are some straw and cotton lying in a pile on the porch:

Time Flies, Doesn't It? 1

I don’t know if the nest (which I leave up every year so they know they are welcome back) was destroyed as part of an annual remodeling, or if perhaps there is about to be a vicious turf war for nesting privileges. Regardless, it made me happy because spring is here. The cycle of life, they say.

***

It was on this day, a year ago, that the Balloon Juice community received the shocking and horrible news that Alain had died in his sleep. It feels like it was both just yesterday and a lifetime ago, but nonetheless, it has been a year. Now that the initial shock and grief are over, it’s so much easier to remember who Alain was as a person.

Oddly enough, I was in the basement the other day grabbing some of the remaining cans of peaches and pears, and I grabbed the last jar of peach jam and ginger that Alain had made and sent me. He’d sent me several different types of jellies and jams- peach/ginger and grape are the two I remember the most, and while I don’t recall the specific details, I do sort of think I remember the peaches were a special kind grown in Colorado. I stared at the jar for a while and looked at the thoughtful label, then went upstairs and ate it. It was so good I finished it in two meals, the second a sumptuous peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a heaping of the jam and an ice cold glass of milk. The classics never go out of style.

The peach jam really sums up who Alain was. He’d sent it to me because I had been making a bunch of jam and talking about it, and he was also making jam, and with his omnipresent thoughtfulness, decided he would send some to me. Alain was kind that way. He was generous with his time, spending thousands of hours on this website simply because he loved you all so much. And he was thoughtful- doing the little things, the generous things, the kind things, the things that make this crazy world bearable. Not because he wanted something in return, but because being kind made him happy.

In a world full of little men acting like big shots, throwing around money on grotesque buildings that are little more than vulgar vanity projects, or slapping their names on schools so that THEY WILL HAVE THEIR LEGACY AND THEY WILL BE REMEMBERED, we’re so lucky to get to know people like Alain. Buildings crumble, but the ripple effect of Alain’s kindness will be passed down by those who received it for generations.

Now that’s a legacy.

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Potter Charged

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Swift action in the shooting of Daunte Wright:

The Minnesota police officer who fatally shot Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, after appearing to mistake her handgun for her Taser was arrested on Wednesday and charged with second-degree manslaughter following three nights of protests over the killing.

The arrest of the officer, Kimberly A. Potter, who is white, came a day after she resigned from the Brooklyn Center Police Department, as did the Minneapolis suburb’s police chief. Hundreds of people have faced off with the police in Brooklyn Center each night since Mr. Wright’s death on Sunday, demanding that the former officer be charged, even as the region is on edge amid the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis officer charged with murdering George Floyd last May.

Again, IANAL, but this seems to me to be the correct charge. I don’t think she intended to shoot him with a gun, and I think you would be guaranteeing she walked if you charged her with murder. I know this will anger many, but I find much more guilt in the system in this shooting than I do in Officer Potter.

Why is Daunte Wright dead and why is an officer going to trial and why is there unrest in the streets of Brooklyn Center? That’s the question everyone responsible for policing in this country should be asking themselves. And to answer that, you have to go through how we got where we are.

Why are police still stopping people for non-moving violations?
Why are police still racial profiling?
Why are police pulling people over for bullshit like expired tags?
Why were there so many police there- they feed off each other and act more aggressively in groups.

And on and on and on. I’ll even take it a step farther- why did they have to arrest him for the warrant right then and there. Why even elevate it to the point that a taser was “needed.” Even though he was showing mild resistance and got back in his car, why was it so important that he be arrested that very second? You have fucking radios. You know where he lives. It wasn’t a big enough deal to have him in jail to send anyone to his house to arrest him, why all of a sudden just because you’ve nailed him for the crime of having air freshener from his mirror or whatever bullshit pretext you used to initiate the stop did he have to be arrested right then and there.

Again, what is the worst that could have happened if he just got in his car and drove home, and you followed him home and arrested him there with his mom? Or a week later?

Why do we have a system of policing built around violence, dominance, and requiring instant submission and deference? It’s the same with all these fucking no-knock warrants and other bullshit. The Breonna Taylor murder is another instance of this. They had surveilled her apartment. They fucking knew she and her boyfriend were in there. Why the fuck could they not just sit outside by his car and wait for him to head to Sheetz or Getgo for a pack of smokes or a soda? Why did they have to go HAM and raid the place with pistols blazing.

Our system of policing makes no sense to me.

Update at 6:35 PM EDT by Adam L Silverman

Cole asked me to do a quick update for him because he’s away from his keyboard.

What’s even worse in the Breonna Taylor case is that the warrant was NOT for her fiancé, which was the man she was in her apartment asleep with, but, rather, for an ex boyfriend who did not live at her residence and who had been arrested ten blocks away, and, according to the attorney’s for Taylor’s family, 40 minutes before the time that the warrant for Taylor’s apartment was executed. Additionally, Taylor’s family’s attorney has alleged as part of their lawsuit against the city that the warrant issued for Taylor’s residence really had less to do with her ex’s allegedly criminal behavior and more with a local development scheme to drive residents out of the neighborhood so that it could be gentrified. We’re still waiting for further details on if this alleged scheme is at the heart of why the warrant was issued for Taylor’s residence, but if it does turn out to be one of the motivating causes, then someone in municipal leadership, including someone in the local prosecutor’s office and, perhaps the judge who signed off on the warrant, are dirty. Additionally, local reporting by the Louisville Courier Journal indicates that the Louisville Police made numerous false representations of facts – colloquially lied – on the warrant application for Taylor’s residence. This includes falsely claiming that the US Postal Inspectors in Louisville had provided them accurate information that Taylor’s ex – Jamarcus Glover – had been receiving packages at her apartment for him. The Postal Inspector indicated that Louisville Police hadn’t asked, that there was no evidence this was the case, and that when a different agency had asked several months before the Postal Inspectors had investigated and found the allegations unwarranted.

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Finally Pulling Out

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Betty mentioned this earlier, and I am hoping Adam will have a long discussion about it because he will know more than me, but it looks like we are FINALLY withdrawing from Afghanistan:

President Biden will withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan over the coming months, U.S. officials said, completing the military exit by the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that drew the United States into its longest war.

The decision, which Biden is expected to announce Wednesday, will keep thousands of U.S. forces in the country beyond the May 1 exit deadline that the Trump administration negotiated last year with the Taliban, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters Tuesday under rules of anonymity set by the White House.

While the Taliban has promised to renew attacks on U.S. and NATO personnel if foreign troops are not out by the deadline — and said in a statement it would not continue to participate in “any conference” about Afghanistan’s future until all “foreign forces” have departed — it is not clear whether the militants will follow through with the earlier threats given Biden’s plan for a phased withdrawal between now and September. The Taliban has conducted sputtering talks with the Afghan government, begun under the Trump deal, since last fall. It was also invited to an additional high-level inter-Afghan discussion in Turkey later this month.

We’ve been there for 20 years. We have been there longer than this website has existed. Colleges and universities are filled with juniors and seniors who have lived their entire lives while we have been at war in Afghanistan. We have been there so long that stories of fathers and their children both being deployed at the same time are common.

In 1941, Hitler invaded Russia as Operation Barbarossa started. The Russians were decimated, knocked back on their heels, but in less than two years they rebuilt multiple armies and defeating the Nazis at the two most important battles in World War II, the battle for Stalingrad and the defense of the salient at Kursk.

We’ve had 20 years. Bin Laden is dead. Call it a win and leave.

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It’s the Policies, Stupid

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This morning I went off on an angry rant on the twitter machine when reading about the killing of Daunte Wright, and discovered that the cops pulled him over for fucking expired tags. Basically, it is my belief that cops who pull people over for shit like expired tags, not being able to see a second license plate, air freshener hanging from the mirror, or other bullshit like that, are in essence online trolls in real life. And the cities and communities that have their cops out doing this are doing so for several reasons:

1.) To raise money to fund the government so taxcut Jesus won’t get a sad.
2.) To harass and keep minority communities in “their place”
3.) To maintain a militaristic carceral state

Who, exactly, is safer in that Minnesota community because a couple of bored cops decided to fuck with a black kid with expired tags? Who is safer in Virginia because a bunch of bored cops decided to fuck with an Army LT because they couldn’t see his second license plate? No one.

It’s the same god damned thing that went on in Baltimore and NYC with the street level harassment of fucking with people sitting on their stoop listening to music and having a beer. It’s the same bullshit as roughing people up and breaking down doors because you smelled weed smoke. It’s the same fucking thing that was discussed in the detailed Ferguson report in 2015 when we last had a functioning DOJ.

And, it doesn’t just happen to minorities. It happens at a far greater rate of occurrence for minority communities and is far deadlier for them, but the same shit happens to poor white people here in West Virginia and elsewhere. There aren’t enough black people to fund the government here, so you gotta fuck with other “undesirables.”

And it makes life a living hell for everyone. People lose their ability to drive over bullshit because they can not pay the cascading fines or take off to make all the court dates, and shit spirals out of control and before they know it they owe thousands of dollars for a fucking nine dollar license plate tag, have lost their car, lost their job because they can’t get there, and are further mired in poverty and hopelessness. It’s the same fucking thing credit card companies do to trap people in indebtedness. Why do many poor people drink to excess and do drugs? Because we have made their lives fucking unbearable without them.

And this is not new. We all know this. It has been happening long enough that we all are aware this goes on. I’d also posit that it has been going on so long that people who like to abuse people are drawn to policing, because it gives them a license to bully and hurt people. So, at this point, if you are not actively working to try to fundamentally reform policing and government, you are part of the problem.

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Open Thread

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Not sure where everyone is, but I am sitting here watching Gamorrah, and it is fabulous. If you liked the Sopranos, watch this.

Had something odd happen over the weekend. Woke up Friday morning, and the crown on upper left molar was missing. It was there the night before. Never found it, so I guess I ate the damned thing. Fortunately, I had my first cleaning since the pandemic started scheduled for Wednesday, so I am gonna do a twofer.

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Please Stop Calling Them Conservatives

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Meanwhile, at the Supreme Court:

Although the conservative majority’s decision was unsigned and ran just four pages long, it radically altered the law of religious liberty. Since 1990’s Employment Division v. Smith, the Supreme Court has not interpreted the First Amendment’s free exercise clause to require religious exemptions to laws that don’t discriminate against religion. In Tandon, however, the majority effectively overturned Smith by establishing a new rule, often called the “most favored nation” theory. Under this doctrine, any secular exemption to a law automatically creates a claim for a religious exemption, vastly expanding the government’s obligation to provide religious accommodations to countless regulations. In Tandon, for instance, the Supreme Court held that California had to let people gather indoors for Bible study because it allowed them to gather indoors to get a haircut, eat, or take a bus; if Californians can get pedicure, they must also be permitted to spend hours in close quarters discussing the Bible. And the Supreme Court created this sweeping new rule through its shadow docket—those cases decided with minimal briefing and no oral argument outside the court’s normal procedure.

A solid analysis, and expect more of it to come, but I am begging everyone, please stop calling the Supreme Court majority “conservative.” They are anything but. They do not care about precedent or stare decisis, they do not care about stability or preserving the current order, none of the things with which the word conservative have previously been associated.

They, and the current Republican party, are neither conservative or reactionary, because they are not actually reacting to anything in reality. They are regressive radicals intent on creating a new society and new social order that never existed anywhere at any time other than in their heads. Refusing to acknowledge this and labeling these lunatics as conservative normalizes them. There is NOTHING normal about these guys. Their beliefs are an amalgamation of the know-nothing party, Birchers, gun nuts, and theocrats, but there is NOTHING conservative about them.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

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