Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

I really should read my own blog.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Motown is Joe-Town!

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Republicans don’t trust women.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

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40Comments

  4. 4.

    wilfred

    George Galloway is a man with real balls and genuine political conviction. He participated in the Viva Palestina relief convoy to Gaza from the beginning and has been tireless in support of that effort, even in the face of two drivers being arrested in England under anti-terrorism laws and the current Mubarak instigated thuggery in Egypt. He was also the only political office holder to challenge the Senate ‘official story’ during its halcyon days of kill the Muslim niggers.

    Christopher Hitchens is a pathetic drunken slob who’s found new asses to kiss in his born again neo-conism.

    So, yeah, substitute one for the other.

  8. 8.

    The Other Steve

    Remember when Norm Coleman was going to put George Galloway’s head on his wall?

    I don’t have warm feelings for Galloway, but man, that was awesome!

    Remarkably it was Norm Coleman’s only notable achievement in his 6 year Senate career.

    And he wonders why he had such trouble getting reelected.

  9. 9.

    Shinobi

    So it turns out the left has been peddling this angry right wing meme so we can get whatever we want and not lose ground in the 2010 election.

    We must be really clever conspirator’s. How much do you think we’re paying Rush and Santelli? Do you think Anne Coulter is still on our payroll?

  10. 10.

    Xenos

    Can someone throw a drowning man a link or two? I can’t find anything about it in the news.

    The whole Hitchens phenomenon is fascinating, though. So smart a lefty getting all cozy with imperialists makes for quite a trainwreck of Trostkyism gone bad. We should all resent him for proving Alexander Cockburn for the first time in his life. Hitch just narrowly escaped a thorough beating from some pro-Syrian thugs in Beirut, so you think he would learn to watch his step out there.

  11. 11.

    cleek

    So it turns out the left has been peddling this angry right wing meme so we can get whatever we want and not lose ground in the 2010 election.

    i love that.

    Henke’s post says:

    Really? First Republicans criticize big government, then…the Holocaust? Are these the Democratic talking points? I understand Robert Reich’s desire to carry movement water, but I would think he would have the integrity to carry better water than this.

    the post before, RisingTide says:

    We are now in a worldwide depression. /n you are a fool if you do not fear fascism at such a time. Hitler, of course, was a centrist who favored unions.

    double Godwin with a triple Lutz.

  12. 12.

    Tony J

    I don’t have warm feelings for Galloway, but man, that was awesome!

    Exactly. My only problem with Galloway is that he’s such a bad frontman for any cause he champions. He knows that the British Media will use his perma-tanned, ‘I’m A Celebrity’ grandstanding as an excuse to dismiss and ridicule anything he’s associated with, but he sticks himself front and centre anyway, then howls to the wilderness about how unfair it all is.

    Yes, George, it’s unfair. So why the fuck do you insist on making it pathetically easy for the Media to ignore the issue you’re championing and just write stories about you if that’s not what you really want?

  13. 13.

    BethanyAnne

    Since it’s an open thread… anyone else see Watchmen? I didn’t read the books beforehand, and was blown away. Just awesome; I loved how they managed to do justice to like 6 plot threads at the same time. Telling much of the backstory via the opening credits was just great. Very immersive. /fangirl :-)

  14. 14.

    wilfred

    He knows that the British Media will use his perma-tanned, ‘I’m A Celebrity’ grandstanding as an excuse to dismiss and ridicule anything he’s associated with, but he sticks himself front and centre anyway, then howls to the wilderness about how unfair it all is.

    I don’t know – they trash the bejeesus out of John Pilger, too and he’s as unassuming and non-threatening as a church mouse.

    George has a show on Iranian Press Tv that I watch and call in to sometimes. Sure he’s a bit larger than life but he’s a voice for the dispossessed and he doesn’t get shouted down so easily. As for complaining – he gives as good as he gets and isn’t afraid of anyone.

  15. 15.

    Brick Oven Bill

    “I have more than enough to do without worrying about the financial system.”
    – President Obama phone call to the New York Times

    Stimulus #1 = ~$800,000,000,000

    Stimulus #2 = ~$500,000,000,000

    Tax increase on rich; assuming no ‘Galt Effect’ = (0.046) * (733,300,000,000) = 33,000,000,000; cancel zeros
    (800 + 500) / (33) = 40 years

    Obama has expended 40 years of the increased tax revenues from the top 5% in his first 2 months in office. We know will get the $400 billion we just gave Fannie-Freddie back, because we know that the private banking system sold Fannie-Freddie their good-quality loans.

  16. 16.

    Comrade Darkness

    @BethanyAnne, I’m glad there is hope for this movie. I read the graphic novels twenty years ago. Anyone seen it who has read it with a supporting opinion? I rarely go to movies, but I’m willing if it won’t be crap (as usual).

  18. 18.

    joe from Lowell

    @ Tony J

    He knows that the British Media will use his perma-tanned, ‘I’m A Celebrity’ grandstanding as an excuse to dismiss and ridicule anything he’s associated with, but he sticks himself front and centre anyway, then howls to the wilderness about how unfair it all is.

    A lefty, British Limbaugh?

  19. 19.

    Tony J

    Remarkably it was Norm Coleman’s only notable achievement in his 6 year Senate career.

    Heh. In which notable achievement= Major Fail. Coleman’s targetting of Galloway, and his blinkered surprise at Galloway’s "I can get on TV in America? Brilliant!" response is one of the main reasons I’m so hug-myself-till-pee-comes-out glad that it’s Al Franken who unseated him. That’s really got to hurt.

    We are now in a worldwide depression. /n you are a fool if you do not fear fascism at such a time. Hitler, of course, was a centrist who favored unions.

    Truly, the Kool-Aid is strong in that one. Is that an example of the Goldberg Variation on Actual History?

    "You know that Hitler sent the leaders of Germany’s Trade Unions to concentration-camps and forced everyone to join Nazi-controlled Unions that took their orders from Berlin, don’t you?"

    wingnut – Click-wirrr"Can’t you read, moonbat? It says ‘Unions‘."

  20. 20.

    NonyNony

    @BethanyAnne:

    I suggest that you go get a copy of the book now that you’ve seen the movie.

    The depth that the movie had came about almost completely because the parts of the book they chose to adapt were adapted nearly verbatim from the book. Right down to the symbolism and the visual imagery.

    Many plot threads had to be cut for time – for example in the book Times Square (and the people in it) is basically a character in and of itself (which makes the ending more emotional, at least IMO). There are entire subplots revolving around characters like the psychiatrist that don’t happen in the movie (indeed, the whole prison sequence had quite a bit of stuff cut from it for time/space constraints).

    Every time I read the book, I find something new in it. Definitely worth a read.

  21. 21.

    joe from Lowell

    Brick Oven Bill doesn’t believe in no "population growth" or "inflation" or "economic growth."

    Right, 40 years. We will collect exactly the same amount of money from the top income tax bracket as 2007 for the next forty years.

  22. 22.

    Incertus

    @Comrade Darkness: Loved it, and I say that as someone who bought the comics when they came out as a limited series when I was a teenager. I didn’t have high hopes for the film, because I thought it was probably unfilmable as a single movie at least. I still think it could be even better as a miniseries, but Snyder did a hell of a job translating it to the screen.

    Open thread wise, Stanley Fish is still clueless, it seems.

  23. 23.

    BethanyAnne

    I’m definitely going for the book next. If I haven’t read the source of a movie, I always try to see the movie first. I tend to enjoy both more that way. With the Watchmen, it looked neat enough that I didn’t even finish the trailer; I had my "ooo, gotta see that" moment, and closed the browser.

  24. 24.

    NonyNony

    @Comrade Darkness:

    If you loved the book, you will be able to pick the movie apart. It’s a flawed vehicle, and where it occasionally reaches points of brilliance, those of us who’ve read the book can see it’s because of how closely Snyder and Co. put Moore and Gibbon’s work onto film. The underlying novel is brilliant, and so film gets some of that brilliance just by hewing so closely. (Though I give Snyder & Co. a lot of credit for the opening credits – the way they did them was quite effective at providing enough backstory in a way to get people up to speed and do it creatively enough that people enjoyed the visual exposition. Probably the best "new" thing in the whole movie IMO.)

    There’s a lot to pick at in the movie. The acting has a lot of variation in it, the digital effects are awesome but the "analog" effects like makeup are kind of shoddy. In the places where Snyder drifts away from the underlying material, his personal fetishes for "EXTREME" elements come through in a way that doesn’t feel quite right to me at least. And there are other complaints.

    But given all that, I was entertained. I’ve read the book probably 30 times in the last 20+ years and I thought it was a decent enough adaptation. There are things I would have done differently, but overall it was entertaining enough. It made me want to break the book out again and re-read it, so I’d call it a success.

  25. 25.

    Ned R.

    @NonyNony:

    If you loved the book, you will be able to pick the movie apart. It’s a flawed vehicle

    Pretty much my take, I’ve been breaking it down a bit in a series of posts on my blog, but the best comparison point I found is to Lynch’s Dune. It’s neither a perfect success nor a massive failure and I distrust judgments claiming one or the other. It’s a very hard movie to love, honestly — some of Snyder’s choices are pretty poor, specifically his grotesque upping of general violence (I am not a fan of ‘torture/horror porn’ or whatever the term is these days) combined with his inability to decide on whether he’s trying to adapt Watchmen straight-up or use it as a vehicle to specifically go against modern comic book movies. That said, the inspiration for the big change at the end of the movie is excellent, making the many small changes all that much more frustrating. It is worth seeing but with many caveats.

  26. 26.

    Tony J

    A lefty, British Limbaugh?

    Sort of, except Limburgh is a grotesque scumbag with millions of dittohead followers who can make or break the leadership of a major political party, while Galloway is actually right on the issues, and only dreams that he could have that kind of influence.

    I don’t know – they trash the bejeesus out of John Pilger, too and he’s as unassuming and non-threatening as a church mouse.

    George has a show on Iranian Press Tv that I watch and call in to sometimes. Sure he’s a bit larger than life but he’s a voice for the dispossessed and he doesn’t get shouted down so easily. As for complaining – he gives as good as he gets and isn’t afraid of anyone.

    Yeah, but you’ve hit the nail on the head with the bolded part. Pilger stays out of the limelight and makes it hard for his denigrators in the MSM to smear his work through association with manufactured scandal, and as a result does a lot of good work providing facts. Galloway goes the opposite route, challenging to MSM to ignore what he’s talking about by concentrating their coverage on him, which they then do. and everything else gets conveniently lost in the static.

    He doesn’t give as good as he gets, because he can’t. He simply doesn’t have the profile to hit back. He only gets on TV because the host wants to show how ‘tough’ an interviewer they can be and, hopefully, spark a Galloway walk-off. He’s an ‘entertainment’ figure, and it’s mostly his own fault. You simply do not go on Celebrity Big Brother and dress in a lycra catsuit – impersonating a real cat – if you want to have the issues you raise taken seriously by anyone. You just don’t.

  29. 29.

    R-Jud

    Bah:

    "“Watchmen” features this year’s hands-down winner of the bad movie sex award, superhero division: a moment of bliss that takes place on board Nite Owl’s nifty little airship, accompanied by Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” (By the way, can we please have a moratorium on the use of this song in movies? Yes, I too have heard there was a secret chord that David played, and blah blah blah, but I don’t want to hear it again. Do you?)"

    Watchmen was going to be part of our first post-baby date, but I think I’ll exercise my veto power and just opt to stay at the pub an extra three hours instead.

  31. 31.

    Incertus

    @R-Jud: That’s A. O. Scott’s review, right? He just didn’t get the movie. The sex scene is supposed to be laughably bad–that’s the point. Here’s a guy who, when faced with the woman he’s lusted after for years, can’t get it up in his living room, but he can after he puts on his costume and beats up some bad guys. It’s meant to show how vapid he is, and she is as well, and it works, because the scene is practically porn-quality acting without actually seeing penetration. It’s part of the whole critique of the comic-book superhero.

  32. 32.

    Cris

    I have very mixed reactions to the Watchmen film. I would echo Ned R. , that "it’s neither a perfect success nor a massive failure." I very much agree with Matt Singer’s criticisms, but I enjoyed the film regardless.

    At least for the first hour, I was caught up in the mindset that Singer describes:

    If this is all you require of the Watchmen film—seeing the characters brought to life onscreen, moving through their world convincingly, and hearing them say their lines—you will be delighted.

    In this respect, I strongly recommend that any fan of the book should see the movie simply to see Jackie Earle Haley’s performance as Rorschach. I had issues with some of the casting (neither Malin Akerman nor Matthew Goode resonated emotionally with me), but Haley was a perfect Walter Kovacs.

    But I’m glad to hear, from both BethanyAnne and Roger Ebert, that the movie was affecting for people who hadn’t read the original. I’m so familiar with the source material that it was really impossible for me to approach the film as a newcomer.

  33. 33.

    Rick Taylor

    Hands in the air, this is a hold up! Via Ritholtz.

    An AIG report to the Treasury Department last month warned that if the government didn’t come to its rescue again, its collapse would trigger a "chain reaction of enormous proportions" that would "bankrupt the entire system" and make it impossible for AIG to repay the billions it already owed the U.S. government.

    An AIG report to the Treasury Department last month warned that if the government didn’t come to its rescue again, its collapse would trigger a "chain reaction of enormous proportions" that would "bankrupt the entire system" and make it impossible for AIG to repay the billions it already owed the U.S. government.

    A draft of the report, obtained by ABC News, was marked "strictly confidential." It said, "The failure of AIG would cause turmoil in the U.S. economy and global markets and have multiple and potentially catastrophic unforeseen consequences."

  34. 34.

    Incertus

    @Cris: Cris, on a completely unrelated note, thanks for coming to The Rumpus. I’m the poetry editor there, and this is the first time I’ve seen someone other than myself link to it around here or elsewhere for that matter. Glad you found it.

  35. 35.

    Mike in NC

    Since it’s an open thread… anyone else see Watchmen? I didn’t read the books beforehand, and was blown away.

    Never heard of it last year amid all the hype. Book was OK and I really enjoyed the film version, though at 2 hours and 40 minutes it was loooong. The DVD should come loaded with goodies.

  36. 36.

    NonyNony

    @Incertus:

    The sex scene is supposed to be laughably bad—that’s the point. Here’s a guy who, when faced with the woman he’s lusted after for years, can’t get it up in his living room, but he can after he puts on his costume and beats up some bad guys. It’s meant to show how vapid he is, and she is as well,

    I will mostly agree with this, except that I think it’s meant to show not how vapid they are, but rather how dysfunctional. They have a shot at a real, human connection earlier, but they can’t connect because they both have problems relating to people as human beings. Then they put on costumes, save a few lives, and bam – "hottt EXTREME porno" sex with an over-the-top soundtrack going on in the foreground.

    I have to believe that was intended to be humorous and awkward. The book is much more subtle about it, but then the book builds up both Dan and Laurie’s personal psychological dysfunctions for many chapters before hitting this point in a way that just probably wasn’t possible for the movie.

  37. 37.

    Cris

    @NonyNony:

    I have to believe that was intended to be humorous and awkward. The book is much more subtle about it…

    But both book and movie retain the bit that puts the exclamation mark on the scene, where Laurie accidentally sets off the flamethrower, coinciding with Dan’s orgasm. It’s a deliberate send-up of a classic Hollywood trope (e.g. train rushing into a tunnel) that reminds us how superficially superhero comics treat sexuality.

    but then the book builds up both Dan and Laurie’s personal psychological dysfunctions for many chapters before hitting this point in a way that just probably wasn’t possible for the movie.

    Which is why Incertus is right, this would have been far better suited to a 12-part straight-to-cable miniseries. It would have allowed for more background subplots, and given us more time to become emotionally invested in the characters. But that approach undoubtedly would have been less profitable.

  38. 38.

    Catsy

    A full miniseries to completely translate every nuance of the comic book to screen would have been nice, but I thought what we got was pretty damn good too. The other half and I are both avid fans of the original, and we were near-tears at parts. Not perfect–not by a long shot. But damn good, far better than any comic book movie has a right to expect to be.

    I had to swear off reading reviews of the movie because of how aggressively clueless or pretentious most reviewers were. Anyone who actually speaks approvingly of Moore’s puerile, petulant refusal to have anything to do with the translations of his work to big screen–let alone echoes him in their review–really has nothing to say about said movies that I’m interested in hearing. You can cut the art snobbery with a knife, and sometimes I’m tempted to.

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