Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Verified, but limited!

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

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Too inconsequential to be sued

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Yes we did.

The Math Demands It!

Screw the Judean People’s Front. Splitters.

This is how realignments happen…

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot

I can see Russia from this blog!

How has Obama failed you today?

This blog is Obama’s Katrina.

This blog will pay for itself.

I thought we were promised Infrastructure Week

Mission Accomplished!

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

This is a big f—–g deal.

Word salad with all caps

Consistently wrong since 2002

Not all heroes wear capes.

Also, too.

Usually wrong but never in doubt.

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Memories of Summer

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Momsense - Peony blossoms

Sincere thanks to staunch commentor MomSense:

Finally getting around to sending some photos from my garden.

Momsense Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Memories of Summer

The photos are of peonies, irises, nepeta, salvia, and a montauk daisy.
Momsense - Montauk daisies

I probably have 5 or 6 different varieties of peony.

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Memories of Summer

***********
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”

Yes, gardeners, now that you’ve got some indoor time, please send some of those pics you collected during more clement weather!

(And if you’re currently enjoying such halcyon weather… don’t worry, we may be envious but we’ll still be happy if you share your photos…)

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Late Night Open Thread: Buttigieg Seeks Republican Votes

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(Can’t get the embed to work properly, but it’s worth five minutes to watch.)

Striving to impress the Never-Trumpers isn’t a bad move, for someone with Mayor Pete’s (admittedly slender) political credentials. But his dogwhistle wasn’t particularly well performed here, because it seems to have pissed off a lot of Democratic voters without impressing his target audience…

And were I his Comms Director, I wouldn’t have “defended” my boss to Democrats by citing The Bulwark, which is… an outfit explicitly for Never-Trumper Republicans:


(Note: Dana Houle, professional political operative, has said that the more non-professionals know about a campaign’s press staff, the less likely that campaign is to succeed.)

show full post on front page

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COMING TO YOU LIVE FROM THE CITY OF CHARLOTTE, NC

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Currently sitting in a hotel in an undisclosed location somewhere in the city of Charlotte, NC. It’s been seven years since I was last here (not counting driving through it on the highway to get to destination farther south), so I think most of the warrants have expired. Not sure if that is the case for AngryBlackLady, but she is on the west coast and they’ll never catch her, the coppers.

At any rate, I am here because I am helping my parents transition to their winter place down in South Carolina. It’s just too much for them and the dogs to go the full distance in one day, so we stopped here. Tomorrow we will finish the drive, unpack, and then on Monday I will return back home to my lovely critters.

I was going to bring Lily with me, but when I asked her this morning if she wanted to go for a ride, she woke up long enough to lift her head, look at me, and then fall back asleep, so I just left the old gal at home. I also thought about taking Thurston when Lily said no, and then immediately thought “WHY WOULD I DO THAT TO MYSELF?”

So I am alone in a room with the tv off and no animals, and the sensory deprivation of it all may mean I will be in bed by 9:30. And I am ok with that.

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Open Thread: Trading SPACE FARCE! for Paid Parental Leave

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But seriously… I doubt it will happen, because the Repubs don’t want a bunch of ‘low-level bureaucrats’ (federal employees) to get ‘freebies paid from our taxes’, especially right before Christmas (because they can’t enjoy their holiday unless they know other people are suffering). But I would happily trade an expansion of paid family leave in return for, let’s be honest, years of scheduling Very Serious Hearings about a sixth branch of the military. The Washington Post is a good guide here, IMO, because they’re reporting on what they consider a local pocketbook issue:

… The deal is part of a defense authorization bill that is slated to pass this month. If consummated, the agreement could mark one of the biggest deals President Trump has cut with Congress. It would secure a massive expansion of benefits for federal workers, something Democrats have long sought, in exchange for a realignment of the U.S. military that Trump has sought to secure as part of his legacy…

One Democratic congressional aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the parties are “nearing agreement on a final deal.” The package could be voted on as early as next week, the aide said.

If it is approved, the extension of paid family leave to federal workers would represent a major benefit to more than 2 million federal civilian workers, who are only eligible for unpaid leave under federal law.

It would mark a reversal of sorts for the White House, which has sought to strip pay and benefits from federal workers since Trump took office in 2017. Instead, it would mark one of the biggest extensions of a new work benefit for the federal workforce in recent history…

Trump has become increasingly fixated on Space Force as his administration faces the House impeachment inquiry, according to one senior administration official. But it has not been clear if House Democrats would approve of his request.

The Pentagon has already reestablished a Space Command that will be headed by a four-star general. But the Space Force, if approved, would stand up an organization to train and equip specialized forces whose mission would be to accelerate the country’s response to the militarization of space…

A senior defense official with knowledge of Space Force discussions said Thursday that the Air Force convened a planning task force months ago and is weighing “myriad” issues, including how service members would be transferred from the Air Force to the Space Force, what Space Force uniforms would look like, and what rank structure would be used…

Still, there are a variety of more complicated issues that will take the Pentagon time to hammer out, the official said. They include logistical issues, such as where Space Force headquarters will be housed in the Pentagon, and practical ones, such as whether the Space Force will have its own security forces on the ground or rely on other branches of service.

For federal employees, the deal represents not just a rare new benefit, but a victory in a three-year war with the Trump administration that from the start was suspicious of the career bureaucracy of 2.1 million employees.

The White House has gone to war with unions that represent federal workers and won. In recent months it has gotten reprieves from the courts over a union challenge to a series of White House executive orders designed to weaken labor’s hand in collective bargaining.

The administration has slashed long-established benefits such as telework in many agencies and taken steps to more aggressively fire workers it deems poor performers. And while Trump has proposed a raise for the workforce for next year, he did not want an increase this year until Congress intervened, demanding it under the terms of a budget agreement that ended the partial government shutdown…

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Pet Calendar: General Stuck, greennotGreen, efgoldman, Schlemazel… We Need Your Stories, Memories, Quotes

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Speaking of the pet calendar, please get your entries in!  The first deadline was yesterday.

Look for Pet Calendar Info in the upper right, just under the balloon man; that’s where you’ll find the info if you’re on a computer or a tablet in landscape mode. If you’re on a phone, or on a tablet in portrait mode, look for it in the hamburger; that’s what some people call the 3 horizontal lines (top right) on a mobile device.

John is planning a couple of In Memoriam pages at the front of the 2020 BJ Pet Calendar, and we need your help.

Do you have a favorite comment by General Stuck or Schlemazel?  Stories from a meetup with efgoldman?  Something you learned from greennotGreen or Scotian?

Was there an epic fight between the General and Cornerstone?  You know, more than the usual.  A favorite Charlie story?  Words of wisdom from Schlemazel?  Something that greennotGreen shared that particularly touched you?

Do you know some charming thing about one of our beloved commenters that we would all love to hear about?  Something that would make us laugh, or wipe our eyes?

I searched for each person, and there are 461 pages of threads that match with efgoldman, 67 for greennotGreen, 217 for Schlemazel, 1302 for General Stuck, and 12 pages for Scotian.

There may be more for pages for General Stuck, but he changed his nym fairly frequently and I don’t remember all the nyms he used.  Searching for “stuck” gave the best results and found a couple of his nyms.  Do you guys remember any nyms for Stuck besides General Stuck and General Winfield Stuck? (edit: Stuck in the Funhouse, supplied by Librarian.)

Do you remember the spelling of the other nym was that was close to Schlemazel, but not exactly that? Or what his original nym was before he switched it to one of those? Satby did some sleuthing, and it was Schlemizel in 2012. That gives us a few more years of his comments.

I know he and I had a long conversation about why he changed his nym, but to find that one I need to know the original spelling before it became Schlemazel.  If I could find that conversation, I think we could find what his first nym had been.

Reminder: all of efgoldman’s original comments were somehow corrupted on the old site and were no longer there in the old database when we checked about year ago.  Any comments that efgoldman REPLIED to are in there.  So if EF wrote a comment about the awesome watermelon he found at the farmer’s market, that comment is not in the wordpress database.  But if YOU wrote a comment about the awesome watermelon you found, and efgoldman replied to your comment, his reply will be in there.

We have at least a couple of folks with great Google Fu – Steeplejack and Another Scott.   They did some efgoldman sleuthing last year, and I believe Steep is making a last ditch effort with a 2-year old backup to see if any of efgoldman’s comments can be found. If there’s something that was important  that you haven’t been able to find, maybe they can help us out?  Subaru Diane, I hope you see this, too!

In the meantime, if you have stories, memories, or quotes to share, jump right in!

Let’s take this great idea of John’s and turn it into something special.  Are you guys up for that?

Update:  We want everyone to have the opportunity to contribute ideas for the In Memoriam section, if you so desire.  Since the deadline is so short, if you think you might be proposing something over the next few days, please pipe up in the comments IN THIS THREAD to let us know that so we can plan for more input.  Or not.  Thank You!

Update 12/10: If you would like to contribute further to the In Memoriam portion of the calendar, please send email to WaterGirl at the balloon-juice address.  

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Open Thread – Saturday Afternoon Movies – Pearl Harbor and More

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Today is the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Here’s a short film of part of the actual attack. I don’t have information about its provenance, but it was tweeted by an account I trust, and it looks authentic by a number of markers.

Another anniversary is of President John F. Kennedy’s visit to Los Alamos on December 7, 1962, to be briefed on the Rover nuclear rocket program. With Russia developing a nuclear-powered cruise missile, there’s been renewed interest in the Rover program. It’s interesting to see how much less protection there was for a president back then.

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A Rapist In Your Path

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I had no idea this was happening in Chile (and, if you watch the video, which is well worth watching, around the world):

A Chilean protest song about rape culture and victim shaming has become a viral anthem for feminists around the world.

Un Violador en Tu Camino – A Rapist in Your Path – was first performed in late November as Chile’s nationwide uprising against social inequality pushed into its second month. […]

According to statistics compiled by the Chilean Network Against Violence Against Women, 42 cases of sexual abuse are reported each day to the police (approximately two every hour). In 2018, only 25.7% of sexual abuse cases resulted in judicial rulings.

“In the Chilean judicial system, stereotypes and biases harm women victims of sexual violence,” said Bárbara Sepúlveda Hales, spokeswoman for the feminist lawyer group Abofem. “In many trials, the life and sexual behavior of the victim is exposed as if it were a justification for the aggression they suffered.”

Again, via AOC’s twitter.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread

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If Fitzpatrick is your rep, you might want to send him a thank-you message.

===========

And a long read, because it’s Saturday morning and worth the effort:

… Harry Reid, who retired in 2017 after representing Nevada for 30 years in the U.S. Senate—a dozen of them as chair of the Democratic caucus, eight of them as Senate majority leader—was supposed to be dead already; his pancreatic cancer was forecasted to prove fatal within weeks. But he’s still here, which is how I came to be talking with him, not long before Thanksgiving, in a conference room at the Bellagio, asking him why he remains the person to whom many of the Democratic presidential candidates come for advice and anointment.

Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren have both stopped by for meetings and checked in via phone. Pete Buttigieg made a special pilgrimage to see him. Bernie Sanders welcomed Reid to his hospital room after his recent heart attack. Before Mike Bloomberg started filing the paperwork to enter the primaries, he didn’t alert many Democratic Party figures—but he did call Reid…

If defeating Donald Trump rests on the Democratic Party unifying early and strong around a nominee, then the current state of things looks ominous. Polling suggests a scenario in which four different candidates could each win each Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina—with a fifth candidate, Bloomberg, the one with the deepest pockets, only then entering the primaries. Not a recipe for rapid coalescence—and conceivably a situation in which the Democratic convention arrives next July with candidates still scrambling for delegates and no one in possession of a majority. In that case, who could play the role of party elder to mediate among the various factions?

Barack Obama would seem to be the natural choice; he’s not only the last Democratic president, and the only one since Franklin Roosevelt to be elected twice with majorities of the electorate, but he remains the most popular figure, by far, in the Democratic Party. Yet it would be hard for him to appear to remain neutral. He’s good friends with one top-tier candidate, Joe Biden, his vice president for eight years; he’s expressed public doubts and private annoyance about the socialism-inflected movement inspired by another, Bernie Sanders; he’s had an uneasy relationship with a third, Elizabeth Warren, since she briefly worked for him setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and Buttigieg has explicitly tried to position himself as the next Obama. (Obama actually has deeper roots and a closer friendship with a fifth candidate, Deval Patrick, than with any of these four.) But beyond this, Obama doesn’t want to be the party mediator or convention broker. Part of why he’s retreated from the public is because he’s hoping the party will move past him, and he doesn’t think that his being seen to have handpicked Trump’s opponent would be good for Democrats’ odds in the general election. There’s also the more self-interested worry about his legacy: What would it say about him if he couldn’t get a deal done, or if his handpicked candidate loses to Trump?

So if not Obama, then who? Not Bill or Hillary Clinton—they’re too loathed by some of the very factions they’d be trying to soothe. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is the de facto leader of the party, and people close to her hope and expect that she might be asked to mediate, based on her skill at steering the party toward the center-left. But she doesn’t have much of a relationship with any of the candidates or their campaigns aside from Biden, so she wouldn’t be able to exert personal suasion effectively.

That leaves the man, hairless due to chemotherapy, sitting across from me. Reid knows all the candidates who are within range of contention for the nomination; his former aides populate their campaign staffs. Perhaps most important, given the intransigent nature of Bernie Sanders and his supporters—who were notoriously reluctant to yield to Hillary Clinton last time around—Reid may be the only politician in America other than Sanders himself who’s trusted by Jane O’Meara Sanders, the senator’s wife and possibly most fight-hungry defender…

Reid said he agrees with Obama’s warning two weeks ago that the electorate was not as into progressive revolution as some candidates and Democrats on Twitter want to believe—but he also assured me that the party isn’t on a self-destructive bender. “You can go back and look at presidential primaries for as long as you want to go back, and candidates are always criticized in the primary for being too far to the left. But as time moves on, you wind up being more center. It’s going to happen this time, just like it always has,” he said.

Moreover, opposition to Trump will unite Democrats, he predicted, and heal the rifts among them. “We know that to say four more years of Trump will not be good for the country is a gross, gross understatement.”…

If the selection of the Democratic nominee does come down to Reid brokering a compromise, whom might he back? He won’t say, of course, and has promised not to make any endorsement until at least after Nevada’s primary, at the end of February. But he’s been talking up Warren since the 2016 election ended, and she was the candidate he was decidedly the most effusive about, calling her “one of the finest people I’ve ever worked with.” And many former Reid staffers occupy prominent roles on the Warren and Sanders campaigns and on lefty Twitter.

Does all this mean that you’re a secret liberal, or you’re more progressive than people thought? I asked Reid.

“I’m glad you think it’s a secret,” he told me…

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Late Night Open Thread: Floriduh Driver

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(From the tags on the front, looks to be this guy — FL insurance adjuster & Trump fan)

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‘Season of Giving’ Open Thread: Spare A Thought for the Locally-Grown, Artisanal Bigots & Hypocrites

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The multinational big-box kleptocrats, with the Oval Office Occupant as their spokesthing, are making it impossible for the traditional regional hatemongers to get the earned media (free publicity) they rely upon to survive!

Take, for instance, newly-minted reparative-justice advocate and unindicted insurance-fraud Republican Darrel Issa:


“If the soulless legislative middle managers are gonna keep a stand-up guy like Duncan Hunter from voting with us, just because he’s pled guilty to robbing wounded veterans to pay for his golf fees, cigar bars, and at least five extramarital liaisons with lobbyists and staffers… who’s gonna be left to accuse the Democrats of immorality and lawlessness? (ME!, that’s who)”

… In August, Issa announced that he had launched an exploratory committee to consider a potential bid for Hunter’s seat, which prompted him to withdraw his nomination by Trump for a trade post.

The Union-Tribune noted that unlike other challengers running for Hunter’s seat, Issa has not criticized the embattled Republican congressman.

On Thursday, the House Ethics Committee urged Hunter to “refrain from voting on any question at a meeting of the House or of the Committee of the Whole House,” citing a House rule regarding convicted lawmakers…

Not to mention the sad status of favorite blog chewtoy Little Prince Rand, who can’t get any front-page MSM attention for the kind of puke-funnel performance that used to be worth thousands from his donors / voters…

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It Wasn’t Balloon Juice

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Just a quick programming note to say that the site interruptions this evening were not the result of a problem with our site – they were the result of problems way further up the networking chain. So there’s that, at least!

Since John thinks that all/most/some of us are insufferable pricks who complain all the time, maybe you guys can use this thread to comment about the things you do like about the new site?

Surely there must be something!

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Ha Ha Fucking Ha

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I guess I’m just going to embed AOC tweets for the duration, but goddam is this sweet. Those fuckers at Amazon tried to hold up NYC for $3 billion in tax breaks, cried like little babies when Mr. Backlash made them feel a little bad about themselves, and then they fucking caved.

Ha Ha Fucking HaPost + Comments (64)

Pet Calendar and In Memoriam

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Just a reminder to submit your pet pictures for the Balloon Juice Pet Calendar 2020. You can click the link to the upper right that says “Pet Calendar Info” and get the full rundown on how to submit. Get them in soon so we can get cracking!

Also, I thought that this year, in the pages prior to the start of the calendar, we would have an In Memoriam for those we have lost. So if you have a favorite comment or memory about General Stuck, efgoldman, greennotGreen, Scotian, schlemazel, or any others, please place them or link them in the comments below. I will then go through and pick out a few and we will include them in the calendar so that when you get it you can look back fondly on their memories. As a bonus I can spend the next six months dealing with angry emails from people whose memory was not chosen because that’s how we roll on this shit website where no good deed goes unpunished you insufferable pricks.

Update: On a computer or a tablet in landscape mode, you can click the link in the upper right that says “Pet Calendar Info” and get the full rundown on how to submit. On a phone or on a tablet in portrait mode, you can find “Pet Calendar Info” under the 3 horizontal lines, aka the hamburger.

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Yes, It Is About Heritage

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Nikki Haley is getting some Twitter non-love (never say “hate”) for her comments about Dylann Roof and the Confederate flag:

Here’s the text of the key part:

“Here is this guy that comes out with this manifesto, holding the Confederate flag,” she said. “And had just hijacked everything that people thought of—we don’t have hateful people in South Carolina. It’s a small minority; it’s always going to be there.”

“People saw it as service, and sacrifice, and heritage,” the ex-governor continued. “But once he did that, there was no way to overcome it. And the national media came in droves—they wanted to define what happened. They wanted it to make this about racism. They wanted to make it about gun control. They wanted to make it about the death penalty.”

Oh that nasty national media, trying to make an incident where a white shooter killed nine black parishioners at a church, and left behind two white supremacist manifestos, about race. And how the hell does a white supremacist hijack a symbol of white supremacy?

Haley’s comeback is that she signed a bill to remove the flag from the statehouse–in 2015. Sorry, when you’re a century and a half too late, you don’t get pity points.

Yes, It Is About HeritagePost + Comments (58)