Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread: The Repub Revanchists

by 2:34 am. It has 11 Comments.

No matter how grotesquely sexist / racist / classist the GOP as a whole devolves, Rep. ‘Pigmuck’ King will strive to be that little bit worse. From the Des Moines Register – “U.S. Rep. Steve King: If not for rape and incest, ‘would there be any population left?'” —

U.S. Rep. Steve King told the Westside Conservative Club on Wednesday that humanity might not exist if not for rape and incest.

“What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled those people out that were products of rape and incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that?” he said at the event in Urbandale, Iowa…

The Kiron Republican was defending his position of not allowing exceptions for rape and incest in the anti-abortion legislation he tried to pass in Congress. Republican leadership had prevented the bills he sponsored on banning abortions from advancing through the House, despite GOP support for the measures, King said…

He actually said that, in front of the cameras — there’s video. Of course the whole forced-birth ‘But what if that aborted baby would’ve been the next Einstein?’ trope has been in use for at least the last forty years, but count on Rep. Pigmuck to bring his own personal touch. And he’s not sorry, either; he insists the outcry that’s greeted his flapmouth bigotry is nothing but a plot by his enemies…

… In the hours after his remarks to the breakfast meeting, condemnation of his comments poured in from Democrats, including those running for president, as well as some Republicans…

“People think it was an organic media feeding frenzy, but no, it was orchestrated from the beginning,” he said Wednesday. “They had told me, ‘Heads up before Christmas: They’re going to try to drive you out of office and get you to resign.’ Within 24 hours, you had people saying, ‘Resign, resign, resign.’ Why? Because the New York Times misquoted me?”
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Late Evening Cat Bleg: Orville and Wilbur Need a New Home!

by 10:42 pm. It has 32 Comments.

Commenter Matthew Reid Krell reached out on behalf of a friend of his with an urgent cat bleg for a pair of brothers in Louisville, Kentucky:

Okay, animal rescue friends: the lovely woman who adopted our two cats six years ago—who adored them—passed away on Monday. She was 10 years older than I am. Her husband called me today to ask if I could either take them or rehome them.

They are beautiful cats. Their names are Orville (the black one) and Wilbur (the grey). They are brothers. 14 years old. Birthday is April 19, 2005. We rescued them when we lived in Wisconsin and only rehomed them when they became horribly stressed in an apartment we were living in thanks to the landlord’s dog. We moved them in with Shari and David, a lovely childless couple who doted on them and cared for them. They have been really well-cared-for and loved.

With Stephen being on one leg and with my (now decidedly confirmed by the doctor) allergies, we really aren’t in a position to give them the home they deserve.

Who do you know? Who can I contact? I will pay all vet expenses to have them checked and have shots updated. I will transport them. I would pay sponsorship to a foster family for all upkeep.

I love these cats. I wish I could bring them home. I can be reached at [email protected] to start the process of getting Orville and Wilbur into a loving home for their twilight years.

Okay you lot of jackals, you know what to do. And here’s some more pictures of these handsome gentlemen as incentive!

As far as I know the baby is not up for adoption.

Open thread!





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Museums Are Not Neutral: Milwaukee Art Museum Bus Art

by 9:39 pm. It has 38 Comments.

ArtXpress Milwaukee county bus mural

Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.

Open thread.





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Ongoing Active Shooter in Philadelphia!

by 8:37 pm. It has 97 Comments.

This appears to have started about 4 hours ago and is still ongoing. It apparently started while Philadelphia Police were trying to serve a warrant.

And that despite taking casualties, the Philadelphia Police Department is trying to end this without further violence.

From Philadelphia Police Department Sergeant Eric Gripp:

Update at 9:47 PM EDT

Open thread!





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Guest Post: “A Troubled Paradise”

by 5:40 pm. It has 72 Comments.


Thank you, Schroedinger’s Cat:

It has been over a week since Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his right hand man from Gujarat, Amit Shah who is now the home minister changed the constitution of India with little debate in the parliament. Modi government has abrogated Article 370 and Article 35A of the Indian constitution. The state has been under curfew and a strict communication blockade for the last eleven days. Former Kashmiri chief ministers are under arrest.

Article 370 concerns the accession of Kashmir to India, while 35A granted the state of Jammu and Kashmir a degree of autonomy to make laws governing the citizenry of the state. They have been revoked by the government in New Delhi with no input from the citizens of Kashmir. Constitutional scholars can argue about the legalistic validity of these moves, but these actions are undemocratic and unworthy of a constitutional democracy. They blatantly disregard the will of the people of Kashmir. The central government is acting as a colonial power within its own boundaries. Muslim majority Kashmir has been reduced to little more than a colony of Hindu majority India. You can see the population breakup from the 2011 census in the table that I have included. These were the fears that lead to the partition of India. This move reopens the wounds of partition which in Kashmir’s case were never healed.

What this does in practical terms is it strips of Jammu and Kashmir of its statehood and partitions it into two administrative regions. Jammu and Kashmir being the first region and the Buddhist majority Ladakh being the other.

It also means the death of the Indian Republic as it was conceived by the generation that fought for Indian independence. The ideological ancestors of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were nowhere to be found in the freedom struggle. Instead, they were busy criticizing the Indian National Congress and collaborating with the British.

The state of Jammu and Kashmir, independent India’s only Muslim majority state, was guaranteed limited autonomy when they agreed to become a part of India instead of Pakistan after the partition of India. This has been an anathema to the Hindu right since India’s inception. A thorn in the side of their dream of a muscular Hindu state where other religions are not equal but merely tolerated.

Modi and Shah’s actions betray India’s founding principles, and undermine both federalism, religious freedom. The intellectual heirs of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassins are enacting their vision of India. That the BJP did this after getting a brute majority in the elections held earlier this year is not surprising. The Rashtriya Swayam Sevaksangh (RSS)’s agenda on this issue has been clear since India’s independence when their political arm was called the Jan Sangh.

What has been rather disappointing and sad is the feeble to non-existent opposition response and sycophancy of India’s prestige media like the Times of India, the Hindu and India Today. Most of the Indian media is either not covering this major story or giving cover to the government in New Delhi.

One has to go the web-only outlet, The Wire to find Kashmir covered in detail. This story is still developing and I will post updates.

Table I : Population Breakup of the Jammu and Kashmir from the 2011 census


Source: Wikipedia





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(Extremely Tongue-in-Cheek) Respite Open Thread: Encouraging Arson By Vermin Procyon-Lotor-Americans

by 4:46 pm. It has 54 Comments.

I’m glad the little guys escaped safely, but if you’ve ever lost power due to a coon (or squirrel) taking down a transformer, you’ll get the joke…





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Transatlantic Con Job

by 1:19 pm. It has 270 Comments.

Right now, the Dow is down 700 or so on recession fears. Hopefully the president tweet-screaming stuff like this will calm the jitters:

“The Fed has got to do something! The Fed is the Central Bank of the United States, not the Central Bank of the World.” Mark Grant @Varneyco Correct! The Federal Reserve acted far too quickly, and now is very, very late. Too bad, so much to gain on the upside!

“So far, you’ve had Tariffs imposed on 300 Billion Dollars worth of Chinese products, but you can’t tell me that it has hurt our economy…& it really hasn’t led to any kind of serious rise in prices at the consumer level.” @Varneyco @FoxBusiness And we are taking in $Billions!

Tremendous amounts of money pouring into the United States. People want safety!

LOL! Meanwhile, the corrupt old shitbird commerce secretary had thoughts on tariffs earlier:

The question that elicited Ross’s droning response was whether Trump extracted any concessions from China in exchange for delaying the new tariffs he announced last week. The answer is no, he did not; Tariff Man blinked because even if he’s too stupid to realize it, his low-quality hires know tariffs on consumer goods raise prices for consumers, and a bad holiday season might finally derail the Obama economic recovery and, with it, Trump’s sole argument for reelection.

Speaking of lunatics and morons running economic policy, John Bolton met with Boris Johnson yesterday. Via the Beeb:

Mr Bolton said on Tuesday that the Trump administration supported a no-deal Brexit, and added Washington would propose an accelerated series of trade deals in the event of one…

He said there would be enthusiastic bipartisan support in Congress for speedy ratification at each stage.

Not so fast, said Nancy Pelosi today:

Democrat Nancy Pelosi, whose party controls the House, said the UK’s exit from the EU could not be allowed to endanger the Irish peace deal.

Her comments came after the US national security adviser said the UK would be “first in line” for a trade deal…

“Whatever form it takes, Brexit cannot be allowed to imperil the Good Friday Agreement, including the seamless border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland,” Ms Pelosi said in a statement on Wednesday.

Keep fucking that chlorinated chicken, Brexiteers. I’ll defer to UK jackals on the implications of Pelosi’s warning, but from what I’ve read, figuring out what to do about the Irish border is the stickiest of wickets. Sort of related:

Last week, John McDonnell, the Labour Party chief, said that if Johnson were to lose a no-confidence vote and still refuse to step down, he would reluctantly be forced to remind Her Majesty that she is, after all, the head of state. “I don’t want to drag the Queen into this, but I would be sending Jeremy Corbyn in a cab to Buckingham Palace to say we are taking over,” he told an audience at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, is a lifelong republican who declined to kneel before the Queen when he was appointed to her Privy Council. That he, of all people, might turn to the hereditary monarch to save Britain from its own government is yet another of the Brexit referendum’s hitherto unimaginable, and now entirely conceivable, consequences.

So, to recap, it appears that “conservative” idiots are attempting to ruin the economy on both sides of the Atlantic for no good reason, and their success in that endeavor is looking more likely by the day. I don’t know shit about economics, so maybe this is all nothing and everything will be fine. But looking at the personnel involved in the decision making doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Open thread.





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Failson-in-law

by 12:20 pm. It has 77 Comments.

Jared is so fucking dumb:

The White House has been working for several months to prepare for President Trump to commute the disgraced ex-governor’s [Blagojevich’s] sentence, of which he has already served seven years. The move was spurred on by Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who reportedly thought it would throw a bone to Democrats. Despite LaHood, Bost and CNN’s other sources’ claims, an administration official told CNN that Blagojevich’s case had been “vetted significantly.”

Every single thing about a Blago sentence commutation is stupid.  Democrats won’t appreciate it; his corruption was so comically obvious that Trump’s commutation will have everyone wondering what Blago gave Trump to get him to do it, and it will piss off Republicans.  So, of course, Jared thinks it’s a good deal.





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Profit is So Last Century

by 9:52 am. It has 155 Comments.

WeWork, which owns and operates co-working spaces (in other words, they are a commercial property management company), just filed for an IPO, and it doesn’t look great:

Among the disclosures in the filing, WeWork reported a net loss attributable to the company of $689.7m in the six months ending 30 June 30, compared with a loss of $628.1m a year earlier.

In the same period, revenue more than doubled to $1.54bn.

The company also did not give a time frame for becoming profitable as it continues to invest in expanding its operations.

WeWork’s $700m loss is nothing next to Uber’s $5.2 billion loss for the last quarter, of course, but WeWork’s pitch to investors doesn’t include the extra frosting on the shit cake (self-driving cars, food delivery, scooters, etc.) that Uber uses to divert attention from their utter failure as a business.  WeWork just owns buildings and rents space in them, something that’s been done forever at a modest profit.  The only thing new about WeWork is that they rent office space by the day, week or month, and they serve coffee and fancy snacks in the break room.  Glory fucking hallelujah.

I wonder how bad the next recession is going to be after this ridiculous bubble pops.





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On the Road and In Your Backyard

by 5:00 am. It has 22 Comments.

Good Morning All,

Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Excellent Choice, Ms. Abrams!

by 4:58 am. It has 137 Comments.

Per the Washington Post:

… Abrams, speaking at the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades in Las Vegas, announced a 20-state voter protection initiative, using her experience challenging voting laws during her gubernatorial campaign last year in Georgia, which included widespread irregularities.

“We’re going to have a fair fight in 2020 because my mission is to make certain that no one has to go through in 2020 what we went through in 2018,” Abrams said…

The effort, expected to cost between $4 million and $5 million, will target 20 states, most of them battlegrounds in the Midwest and Southeast, and three states with gubernatorial elections this year: Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi…

In past election cycles, campaigns and state parties tended to wait until the start of general election campaigning to put together voter protection programs, which were often dismantled after elections. But with ongoing efforts by Republican state lawmakers to pass more restrictive voting laws, Groh-Wargo said, it was important that Democrats start working now to be ready to help voters navigate potential hurdles. Similarly, some states, such as Michigan and Nevada, have recently passed laws to expand access to voting, and party leaders and activists in those states need to make sure voters can take advantage of the changes…

The majority of the program will be run by Fair Fight PAC. Depending on the campaign finance laws of individual states, Fair Fight will make direct cash donations or will help groups raise money to hire staff, set up voter hotlines and develop public information campaigns…

Read the whole thing — it’s really uplifting!


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Election 2020 Open Thread: Brad Parscale Would Like to Be A Dangerous Person

by 1:18 am. It has 16 Comments.

He is dangerous, but only because — like his purported employer — he’s the idiot catspaw for at least one foreign power. If he were even halfway competent, he’d keep his head down and his mouth shut. But then, who would know what a Big Swingin’ D*ck he is?

… In their chilling new documentary, The Great Hack, Academy-Award-nominated filmmakers Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim follow the personal stories on both sides of the 2018 Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal that exposed the private data of 87 million Facebook users. Through the eyes of Professor David Carroll who sues Cambridge Analytica to release his personal data, Brittany Kaiser, a top Cambridge Analytica executive-turned-whistleblower, and investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr, the film reveals how Cambridge Analytica used the same military-grade tactics of information warfare they employed against populations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Eastern Europe to manipulate national political elections around the world, including the UK Brexit vote and the 2016 US presidential race. As one former Cambridge Analytica employee expressed, “It’s a grossly unethical experiment, playing with the psychology of an entire country without their consent or awareness.”…

Way to panic the rubes, dude. You’ll be lucky Zuckerberg doesn’t… er, that mysterious entities with tons of money and a strong interest in keeping Facebook profitable don’t find it in their interest to make your career go bye-bye, putz.





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Anti-American Open Thread: The GOP Wants to Make America Smaller

by 11:00 pm. It has 94 Comments.

Per Vox:

… This is not the first time the Trump administration’s effort to curtail legal immigration has brought it into public conflict with the Statue of Liberty. Back in August 2017, when the administration was pushing an ill-fated bill that would’ve restricted legal immigration while giving priority to fluent English speakers, CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta grilled White House policy adviser Stephen Miller during a news conference about how “what the president is proposing here does not sound like it’s in keeping with American tradition when it comes to immigration. … The Statue of Liberty says, ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’”

Miller replied by trying to make a distinction between the statute and Lazarus’s poem, which wasn’t placed on it until years after the statue was installed in New York Harbor.
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Seattle Meet Up Update: The Meet Upening!

by 10:08 pm. It has 20 Comments.

Despite the complete failure of the staff here at Balloon Juice Actual to get the initial post about a potential Seattle meet up posted in a timely manner, commenter CaseyL has reached out, informed me that a meet up will occur tomorrow night, and provided the details:

We managed to come up with a plan for tomorrow’s meetup, and would appreciate it much if you could do a post tonight so that more of the Seattle area BJers hear about it:

Reservation is at:
Saffron Grill
2132 N Northgate Way, Seattle, WA 98133
At 6:30
There is a FREE parking lot
For 8 people (I will call them and change it to 10)
Under the name: Casey.

Thanks much!

–CaseyL

Open thread!





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Life’s Guilty Pleasures

by 7:24 pm. It has 237 Comments.

Today I had to drive to the big city to drop Tammy off, and it was around lunchtime, so I stopped at a place I go to about twice a year, a little hole in the wall that sells nothing but dirty water hot dogs:

That little blue thing- that’s basically it. I have no idea what is in the rest of the house it is attached to, but that blue front is the whole place. You open the door, run right into a counter with about 4 stools and they make your dogs right there. And they are amazing.

Now when I say dirty water dogs, I mean just plain old dogs simmering in a tepid pool of gray water. And these are not artisanal dogs or any shit like that. We’re not talking all beef franks with a natural casing. We’re talking real American hot dogs made out of all the shit they can’t put into a chicken nugget or that is too low quality to make scrapple or sausage, mash it all together into a pink slime with an assload of chemicals, and throw it into something resembling a casing. If you read the label it will tell you made from chicken, turkey, pork and a list of other stuff, but they could really just write “lol animals and shit” because YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GETTING AND YOU DON’T GIVE A FUCK.

They then take the dog, put it in a sad, damp bun- you know the kind, like wonder bread but with less lust for life, the kind you see on the bottom shelf of your grocery store bread aisle that come in an eight pack and half of them have inevitably been crushed or stepped on while stocking them and the sign says “59 cents but will negotiate” in magic marker on one of those pink stars.

Once in the bun-like object, it is covered with an all “meat” chili that comes in mild, medium, or hot. I don’t know if it’s actually meat- it could be soy or something else, all I know is there is nothing as natural as a bean anywhere in it. We’ll just call it meatlike chili sauce. On top of that, if you like, and I do, they will top it with an overly creamy cole slaw. The end product looks like this:

And they are fucking fantastic. I could probably shove an entire one in my fat face and eat the whole thing in one bite, but I don’t because you gotta savor this shit. And I love them. But I only get them about every six months, because while they are amazing, in about 45 minutes, I will have the world’s worst heartburn and sometimes awful things happen later on.

But it’s totally fucking worth it.





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