Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

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

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Consistently wrong since 2002

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Joe Biden can go out like FDR, not by dying in office, but by crushing the fascists.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Every day Vance writes another chapter in the book called “Worst VP Pick Ever”.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

You are here: Home / TV & Movies / Movies / The Highlight of Yesterday’s Debate

The Highlight of Yesterday’s Debate

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Since we are apparently in a YouTube kind of mood today, the highlight of the Republican debate yesterday:

One of my favorite all time movies is a flick many of you may have seen, Breaking Away, and every time I see this clip of Ron Paul yelling about lawyers reminds me of the scene in which Paul Dooley (a WV native) is yelling “REFUND?! REFUND!?”

In case you are curious- Airplane and Harold and Maude are also favorites.

Reader Interactions

29Comments

  1. 1.

    DougJ

    Breaking Away is a classic for so many reasons. I love the scene where the girl slaps him when she finds out he’s just some local idiot.

    In my mind, Gene Hackman plays his father, though I know that’s not true.

  2. 2.

    Teak111

    What about Apocolyse Now! Cheney as Kurtz, Bush the crazy photog, JC as Martin Sheen as it all slowly downs on him.

  3. 3.

    DougJ

    Who takes the Robert Duvall roll? I can’t see Petraeus yelling “Charly don’t surf”. Maybe “Charly won’t achieve tactical momentum”, at best.

  4. 4.

    Gunga Dean

    Ron Paul
    The last sane man standing in the Republican Party.

    He may have to turn off the lights.

  8. 8.

    Tsulagi

    When I saw a few clips of the debate last night I LOL’d while Romney was going though his “I’ll sit down with my lawyers to see if it’s okay to strike” answer. His ‘global test’ moment. When it went to Ron Paul right after that as shown in your clip, Paul was absolutely priceless: “This idea of going to attorneys TOTALLY BAFFLES ME…”

    I’m thinking you should stay registered Republican long enough to vote for Ron Paul in the primary. Just a suggestion. I’m really beginning to like that guy.

  9. 9.

    calipygian

    I saw Paul’s lips moving but heard,

    I want you to get mad!

    I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot. I don’t want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

    All I know is that first, you’ve got to get mad.

    You’ve gotta say, “I’m a human being, goddammit! My life has value!”

    So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

    “I’m as mad as hell,

    and I’m not going to take this anymore!!”

    I half expect to see Paul sprawled out on the floor after tirades like that.

  11. 11.

    Doubting Thomas

    Actually the only movie I ever bought on VHS is Harold and Maude.

    I knew there was something I liked about you John, now I know what it is. I first saw Harold & Maude when I was 13 and just starting to follow politics. If I can ever live up to Maude’s philosophy I’ll consider my life a success.

  12. 12.

    John Giord

    Harold and Maude is an immoral liberal movie! The young man first has fake suicide attempts in order to cause great distress to his Republican mother and in the second half of the movie he commits crimes with the old lady and then has sex with her. Having sex outside of marriage is a sin and should not be encouraged! Thankfully, he didn’t need to use a condom because of her age. That would have just increased the immorality. The old lady lead him straight to fornication and a future home in Hell. He would have been better off as a lonely, depressed young man. Disgusting movie.

    Sincerely,

    Kathryn Lopez, Kate O’Beirne, Ramesh Ponnuru,
    James Dobson, and the late Jerry Falwell.

  13. 13.

    Mr. M'Choakumchild

    Priest: I would be remiss in my duty if I did not tell you that the idea of intercourse – the act of your firm, young body… comingling with… withered flesh… sagging breasts… and flabby b-b-buttocks… makes me want… to vomit

    This made me laugh so much when I was 15 that I nearly passed out. Still does.

  17. 17.

    RSA

    Ron Paul
    The last sane man standing in the Republican Party.

    Depending on your standard for sanity. Ron Paul ran for President as a Libertarian candidate in 1988. His campaign, as described in the Times:

    ”Get rid of the personal income tax,” he declared at the University of Houston recently. Then he added: Bring American troops home, abolish the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency and dismantle every other agency except the Justice and Defense Departments.

    …

    If elected, he says, he would abolish public schools, welfare, Social Security and farm subsidies. All drug laws should be repealed, Dr. Paul maintains, a position that drew hisses at the university.

    Something for everyone to like [or hate].

  19. 19.

    The Other Steve

    I came to a conclusion on Ron Paul.

    The guy is not a threat to our Democracy. He’s not going to win the nomination for President.

    But he is a thorn in the side of the republicans. Right wing bloggers recently selected their least favorite person. Guess who won?

    Ron Paul is almost like a Joe Lieberman, with the exception that Paul sounds reasonably sane.

    So I’m declaring my support for Ron Paul. In fact I’m going to the Minnesota Republican Caucus and supporting the guy. Just to piss the wingers off.

  20. 20.

    Chris Johnson

    The idea that Ron Paul is hysterical with frustration that not ONE of these people are saying “I’d sit down with CONGRESS and we will decide if it’s okay to strike”…

    Awesome, scary, amazing- this alone makes me want to give him money and a big hug. Poor bugger. Everybody else DID go crazy on that little point, and he’s standing there going WTF.

    AMAZING to see him in a Republican debate whacking at them like a MoveOn ad… did you notice that he was the one they sat under the BLUE part of the backdrop, hard LEFT?

  21. 21.

    Badtux

    Sadly, even a nutcase like Ron Paul is saner than every other candidate standing on that stage. What does that say about the Republican party today. As Pooh said, if Ron Paul is the sanest man on that stage…

  22. 22.

    r€nato

    I so want to love Ron Paul. He completely tells it like it is on Republican war-mongering.

    Sadly, of course, he has several major flaws, such as being completely anti-choice, a gold standard nutcase, and he’s determined to return the US to the robber baron age.

    But, I’d sure like him to stick around long enough to prove what a bunch of empty suits the rest of the GOP field are.

  24. 24.

    John's Minions

    You realize of course that we’re wearing “Cutters” shirts under our orange jumpsuits?
    No seriously Cole, get out of my mind! A man doesn’t want to come home from work and find out that hiis “boss” loves a movie about a his hometown and the team that his brother rode for.

    Yer freakin’ me (us) out man!

    Also, those frat pukes can eat a dick, seriously. Throwing up in my backyard on a Saturday night? Gold rims on the Jeep your daddy bought you? Jay-Zus, it’s not wonder we react viloently against G. W. Bush. He’s the prototype Frat-Shithead.
    Excuse us.

  25. 25.

    Michael

    “Harold and Maude”? A movie by and for Terrorists! All the music in the movie was clearly an attempt by Islamofascists to spread their idology of hate to the confused generation of young americans in the 1970s. http://zensite.home.att.net/haroldandmaude/

    Now, “Harold and Kumar” is a different story… But wait, did anyone ever check their immigration status?

  26. 26.

    mds

    I agree that it’s one of the most damning things one can say about the modern Republican Party: that the guy who is sending out fundraising letters asserting that the UN is coming to take away our firearms is the sanest person on the stage. You’d think this would get him more traction with the base, along with his recent endorsement from Stormfront. Yet hostility to an out-of-control executive branch dooms him.

    Anyway, The Other Steve has it right. He’s not going to become the nominee, and definitely not President. So why not at least enjoy watching the gadfly at work on the frontrunners? Pass the popcorn.

  27. 27.

    Punchy

    Harold and Maude

    Is this an East Coast thing? Not only have I not seen it, I’ve never even heard of it.

  28. 28.

    Michael

    Puncy, how old are you? It was a seventies thing. Though I saw it in the early 80s while at my left-wing east-coast liberal college. We had a nearby theater that showed foreign films and hippie relics.

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