Political Fundraising

Establishment media is addicted to the idea of “tough decision”. You know how it goes, Bush wants to go to war with Iraq, Dems don’t, but it’s a tough decision: I mean sure liberals don’t like war but what about letting Hitler 3.0 run free? Or in 2009, Dems want to run up the deficit to help the poor but Republicans want fiscal discipline, so it’s a tough decision. Now, it’s Trump wants to let people die to help the economy while Dems are softies who want to save the lives of all sick elderly moochers and looters at the expense of the all-important job-creators.

Even when it’s phrased in a way that is critical of Trump, it’s bullshit. The way this thing works, it doubles every five days. When they talk about half the population getting it and 1% of them dying, that doesn’t mean those 1.6 million people die gradually over the next fifteen years. It means there’s one week where half a million people (or more) die. One week where’s five million people in the ICU?

You think that wouldn’t tank the economy too?

I understand about indecisionPost + Comments (103)

I get a little worried that people are going to start succumbing to gloom porn and say “fuck it, we’re all gonna die anyway, so I’m going out today.” The lockdown can work. It worked in Wuhan, and there’s early signs it may be starting to work in Italy.

Boom

*ITALY HAS 4,789 NEW CORONAVIRUS CASES, VS 5,560 SUNDAY

— Conor Sen (@conorsen) March 23, 2020

And there were 6500 cases on Saturday. This is a big drop. It could be temporary, but thing slowed down in Wuhan about ten days after they started the big clampdown (with a few spikes in there because of increased testing). Fingers crossed everybody.

And please stay the fuck home if you can.

Working for the clampdownPost + Comments (73)

It’s not just Richard Burr, there’s another Republican Senator trying to make a buck off the suffering and possible deaths of millions of Americans:

Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) reported the first sale of stock jointly owned by her and her husband on Jan. 24, the very day that her committee, the Senate Health Committee, hosted a private, all-senators briefing from administration officials, including the CDC director and Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institutes of Health of the United States, on the coronavirus.

I doubt the press will make much of this story. If Michael Bloomberg wanted to make himself useful, he’d run an eight-figure ad buy at these assholes. He won’t though.

It’s a given that neither Burr nor Loeffler will face any real consequences for this. But I hope we can run them out of office.

I’m a bit hesitant to do any fundraising right now with all the worthy causes in need of help, but if you do want to, you can click through here to the Democratic Senate nominee funds for Georgia (there are two, this is the Special Election one) and North Carolina.

All the politicians making crazy sounds and all the dead bodies piling up in moundsPost + Comments (136)

Fuck these guys:

House Democrats released a package of economic measures late Wednesday that included a $2 billion boost to state unemployment insurance programs, more than $1 billion in nutritional aid, a new paid leave benefit for employees affected by the outbreak, and an increase in federal Medicaid spending, as well as a guarantee of free coronavirus testing.

But that package met a frosty reception from the White House and congressional Republicans,

I have two questions, one musical, one religious. Why are there so few songs attacking political leaders in brutal terms, given that rock n’ roll is supposed to be about sticking it to the man? I can’t think of many at all, aside from some by the Clash.

Now onto the religious question. If so many people in politics are religious, then why don’t they ever talk about avoiding going to hell? As in “I have to vote for this or I am afraid I will go to hell”? That calculation enters my mind all the time, and I’m agnostic. At the very least, on my deathbed, I’d like to receive total consciousness, so I can have that going for me. Why don’t politicians seem to care about things like that?

Speaking of what assholes Senate Republicans are….Give here to the Balloon Juice Senate fund which is split between the eventual Democratic nominees in Maine, Iowa, NC, Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado and….just added Montana! Feel free to split it up however you like. And you can use a burner email, as the kids say, if you don’t want to get too much campaign email. (You can also unsubscribe.)

Straight to hellPost + Comments (143)

I believe that Biden will beat Trump in November. I believe the biggest threat to him doing so is establishment media going along with the lies, smears, trumped up investigations, and god knows what September/October/Early November fuckery that the Trump White House instigates. Hillary would be president now if the New York Times and other prestige outlets hadn’t spent so long on HER EMAILS. I don’t know what we can do to stop this from happening again, but I think one way or another, the Times has to know that they will be put out of business if they do it again. I don’t know how to make that happen but I’m all ears.

Here’s a music topic for the day: what’s your favorite example of talking in a song. I like the beginning to Let’s Just Kiss and Say Goodbye and Woman to Woman. What are some other good examples?

I may not be posting much after Friday for a while. We will probably pull Benny from daycare plus my school went online and I have some administrative duties that this will likely increase.

So I’m going to do some more fundraising while I can!

Give here to the Balloon Juice Senate fund which is split between the eventual Democratic nominees in Maine, Iowa, NC, Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado and….just added Montana! Feel free to split it up however you like. And you can use a burner email, as the kids say, if you don’t want to get too much campaign email. (You can also unsubscribe.)

But the days grow short when you reach SeptemberPost + Comments (232)

Hard for me to believe that Trump attacking Biden for being senile is effective, given how obviously senile Trump is. I also question the wisdom of idiotic personal attacks during what could be the beginning of a pandemic that the Trumpies have aided and abetted with their incompetence.

Here’s the music topic of the day….The other day at the supermarket I heard the One Eskimo song “Kandi”, which samples from Candi Staton’s cover of Patsy Cline’s “He Called Me Baby”. It got me to thinking of one of my favorite musical topics: soul covers of country songs. My favorite of all time is the holiest of holies, Al Green doing “For the Good Times”. Second is Etta James doing “Almost Persuaded”.   What are your favorites?

Any good examples of country covers of soul songs — there’s a bunch of Gram Parsons related ones both with the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers…any others? And what do people think of that cover of “Tennessee Whiskey” Chris Stapleton does where he changes the tune so that it sounds like “I’d Rather Go Blind”? It’s halfway to being a soul cover of a country song, and I like it a lot.

Trying to double down on the Senate fundraising here. I think it’s the most important thing we can do right now for November.

Give here to the Balloon Juice Senate fund which is split between the eventual Democratic nominees in Maine, Iowa, NC, Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado and….just added Montana! Feel free to split it up however you like. And you can use a burner email, as the kids say, if you don’t want to get too much campaign email. (You can also unsubscribe.)

Sundown, you better take carePost + Comments (59)

The other day I was driving back from daycare and James Taylor’s “Mexico” came on. At the very end when he’s doodling around he says “in a honky tonk down in Mexico”, referencing the Coasters’ classic.

It got me thinking…what is your favorite shout out to another song within a song? I’ll have to go with the reference to Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “Up Above my Head” in the Tramps’ “Disco Inferno. What’s your favorite.

Give here to the Balloon Juice Senate fund which is split between the eventual Democratic nominees in Maine, Iowa, NC, Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado and….just added Montana! Feel free to split it up however you like. And you can use a burner email, as the kids say, if you don’t want to get too much campaign email. (You can also unsubscribe.)

I hear music in the airPost + Comments (99)

I’m pretty scared about coronavirus. I’m 50 and have chronic asthma. And I’ve got a young kid and a wife to take care of. I don’t think I want to talk about much about the epidemic here.

So I’m going to try to do fun topic posts and raise money for Democrats in the Senate. This shitshow in our government right now and its capacity to kill millions of people…well, you know we’ve got to double down on changing the guard as much as we can this fall.

Here’s one that came to me yesterday when I heard a crappy cover of a Beatles song: what examples can you think of songs where there are not one not two but three different good versions of it? Only one I can think of “Heard It Through the Grapevine” with Marvin, Gladys and CCR. Any others? And obviously standards don’t count — there’s probably 30 great versions of My Funny Valentine.

Give here to the Balloon Juice Senate fund which is split between the eventual Democratic nominees in Maine, Iowa, NC, Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado. Raised the goal to 30K 50K.

Reluctantly the panic begins to catchPost + Comments (232)

Looks like the Senate trial is almost over and that there will be no witnesses called.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and other Republicans signaled that they were regaining confidence that they would be able to cobble together the 51 votes needed to block new witnesses and documents and bring the trial to an acquittal verdict as soon as Friday,

Only one thing matters: voting out as many of these clowns in the Senate as we can. Give here to the Balloon Juice Senate fund which is split between the eventual Democratic nominees in Maine, Iowa, NC, Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado. We’ve only got a few more days of trial so trying to raise as much as I can while the sun shines. I raised the goal to 25K.

The eagle flies on FridayPost + Comments (71)

I’m curious to see what happens with the witnesses in the Senate trial. I still think there won’t be any but if there are, it will be bullshit anyway, where John Bolton talks for five minutes then they grill Hunter Biden for a week.

Anyway, fuck all these assholes. Give here to the Balloon Juice Senate fund which is split between the eventual Democratic nominees in Maine, Iowa, NC, Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado.

Can I get a witness?Post + Comments (15)

I feel like the Senate trial has turned into one of those movies where you know all along what will happen but there’s various contrived crises for the hero to resolve before the inevitable happy ending. I guess that’s most movies, now that I think about it. So the idea that Republican Senators give a fuck about what John Bolton has to say just makes me laugh:

Per sources, some GOP senators privately pushing White House for information on who at administration had visibility into the manuscript over the last month. Senators feel blindsided.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 27, 2020

The only way to deal with these fuckers is to vote them out of office. Give here to the Balloon Juice Senate fund which is split between the eventual Democratic nominees in Maine, Iowa, NC, Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado.

I could hardly believe it when I heard the news todayPost + Comments (129)

I realize this is kind of bullshit topic but I keep thinking about it…Trump is obviously an asshole who was undoubtedly a shitty father. Ivana hates him, accused him of rape in their divorce proceedings. So…what’s the deal with Eric and Don Jr. and Ivanka? Do you they think he’s an asshole too and just want the inheritance and general free ride or what? I don’t get it. I’m curious if anyone knows anything about the psychology of these kinds of situations.

Speaking of people who suck up to Donald, let’s make vulnerable Republican Senators pay for going along with this sham trial. Give here to a fund split equally between eventual Democratic nominees in Maine, Iowa, North Carolina, Colorado, Georgia, and Arizona.

Daddy ain’t around, probably out committing feloniesPost + Comments (198)

As Brave Sir Mitt gets ready to cave into all of McConnell’s commands, I had a thought: why hasn’t the media lionized Justin Amash they way they’ve lionized Mitt and McCain? Amash did something genuinely courageous — he tanked his career because he had too much dignity to go along with other Republicans on impeachment. And his statements about why he couldn’t weren’t preening and attention-getting, they were simple and factual. I don’t agree with Amash about much else and I can’t imagine ever voting for him for anything, and, no, I don’t want him to get his own MSNBC show (he won’t anyway), but he probably won’t get re-elected now and I don’t see how he goes on wingnut welfare or anything like that after he loses. Mitt and McCain, by contrast, never did much other than write sternly worded tweets, were never in any danger of not being reelected, and are both eight figure wingers who could just retreat back into their money or their vast carelessness if they did fail to get reelected.

It’s a very strange thing: the media loves to blab about the bravery of wankers like Mitt and McCain and Susan Collins and Jim Comey, but when someone does something that involves real sacrifice, it’s crickets. Of course the reason is obvious — they’re all millionaires and they relate to other master of the universe types, not to back-benchers (or bureaucratic whistleblowers).

Let’s make vulnerable Republican Senators pay for going along with this sham trial. Give here to a fund split equally between eventual Democratic nominees in Maine, Iowa, North Carolina, Colorado, Georgia, and Arizona.

Amo, amas AmashPost + Comments (86)

I don’t get out much anymore now that I have a kid, but we did manage to get out during daycare hours this summer to see Last Black Man in San Francisco. And then more recently, my parents were able to babysit while we saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Knives Out, Little Women, and Parasite. One thing I’ve come to realize is that seeing a movie on the big screen is totally different than seeing it at home, especially if you’re easily distracted, as I am.

I liked Last Black Man in San Francisco and Knives Out the best, though I liked Once Upon a Time in Hollywood just as much once it was over (I was dreading the ending too much to enjoy it while I watched, but the twist at the end made me like it better). I liked Little Women too. I didn’t know what to make of Parasite.

What did you think of the movies I mentioned? And what other movies were good this year? One other thing I’m curious to hear what people think about: there have been all these articles about how everything is a superhero movie these days but I find it very easy to go see non-superhero movies and I don’t live in a major city. Is not being able to see non-superhero movies really a thing?

Also too, let’s raise some more money for Democrats in the Senate. The following is split between the eventual nominees in Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Maine, Colorado, and Arizona.

But you knifed me in my dirty filthy basementPost + Comments (95)