Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You cannot shame the shameless.

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

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Consistently wrong since 2002

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

He really is that stupid.

“woke” is the new caravan.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

The revolution will be supervised.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

No one could have predicted…

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

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2012 / Open Thread: Choose Your Death

Open Thread: Choose Your Death

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Since they’ve resorted to sending me emails, I guess CNN really, really, seriously wants everyone to know who’s “hosting the first Republican Presidential primary debate in the “First-in-the-Nation” primary state of New Hampshire on Monday, June 13 at 8 p.m. ET from Saint Anselm College. The debate will be moderated by John King, CNN’s chief national correspondent and anchor of John King, USA….”

Tonight’s particpants vying for the chance to lose in 2012 are Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, RonPaul, Pawlenty, Romney, and Santorum. (The Fox “inaugural debate” slate back on May 5 — don’t ask me why that wasn’t the “first”, I am not now nor have I ever been an RNC member — was Cain, Gary Johnson, RonPaul, and Pawlenty.) CNN is “providing viewers a social experience to engage with the live broadcast” (liveblogging, twitter, facebook) but none of you can afford to pay me enough to sit through that unedited farce.

On the other hand, this is what the BBC had scheduled for Monday evening:

Terry Pratchett’s BBC documentary reopens debate on assisted dying
__
When his own time comes to die, the author Sir Terry Pratchett has said, he would like to be sitting on a chair on the lawn at his home, with a brandy in one hand and a glass of life-ending chemicals in the other. “And with Thomas Tallis on my iPod, I would shake hands with Death.”
__
The question of his own death – and the right to choose its timing and manner – has become more pressing for 63-year-old Pratchett since his diagnosis in 2007 with early-onset Alzheimer’s.
__
Now the vastly successful fantasy writer has made a documentary about the subject of assisted dying, for which he travelled to Switzerland to film the final moments of Peter, a British man suffering from motor neurone disease who had chosen to end his life at the Dignitas clinic…

I hope the whole documentary gets posted online afterwards, not least because Pratchett is one of the living writers I most admire.

Reader Interactions

67Comments

  2. 2.

    srv

    The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says we’ll have a better idea of what success means in Afghanistan in one more Friedman Unit.

    Wonder how many Friedman units Libya will need. And Hezbollah has formed a gov’t in Lebanon – ignoring them has been a great FP success.

  3. 3.

    Spaghetti Lee

    It’s a testament to the Republican field that adding Bachmann, Gingrich, and Romney to the debate actually makes it more respectable than before.

  4. 4.

    Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)

    sources are saying CNN gave romney a preview of the tonight’s debate questions. that’s your corporate media, for ya.

  5. 5.

    Martin

    Drinking game: take a drink for every hand raised in support of something disproven prior to the Civil War. Two drinks for anything disproven prior to the American Revolution.

  6. 6.

    kdaug

    providing viewers a social experience to engage with the live broadcast

    See? Now this is chock-full-o-awesome! I trust we’ll be able to query the candidates live, in real-time?

    “Hey, you fucking fucker! What’s your fucking position on Syrian intervention? Shaddup, dipshit, my fucking cat knows more than you do!”

    …And good times were had by all.

  8. 8.

    Ash Can

    Fox’s debate may have been first, but CNN’s will be really first. Until ABC’s, which will be really, truly first.

    But the debate at the Reagan library, whenever they decide to reschedule it, will be the first real debate. Or something like that.

  12. 12.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    So are you implying that if the BBC is like a glass of brandy then CNN is like a glass of life-ending chemicals?

    Sounds about right to me.

  13. 13.

    eemom

    so the choice for viewers is between the courage of the human spirit striving for dignity in the face of tragedy….and the utter debasement of the sub-human spirit grovelling for approval in the face of lunacy. Hmmmmm……

  14. 14.

    BGinCHI

    Assisted dying and the GOP debate.

    Match made in heaven.

    I hope King introduces a “I Double Dog Dare You” to the proceedings.

  15. 15.

    Ash Can

    @Martin: Here’s an even better drinking game — turn off CNN, turn on the hockey game, and drink whenever you damned well please.

  16. 16.

    JasonF

    The Fox “inaugural debate” slate back on May 5—don’t ask me why that wasn’t the “first”, I am not now nor have I ever been an RNC member—was Cain, Gary Johnson, RonPaul, and Pawlenty.

    The devil, as always, is in the details:

    [CNN is]hosting the first Republican Presidential primary debate in the “First-in-the-Nation” primary state of New Hampshire

    CNN isn’t hyping this as the first debate. They are hyping it as the first debate in New Hampshire.

  17. 17.

    Alex S.

    I, for one, hope that Bachmann nails herself to a cross, Madonna-style. Seriously, she’s got to deliver.

  19. 19.

    srv

    They have “many” differences amongst themselves on the economy and the wars, Mr. King?

    I’m struggling with how many different ways there are to say “cut taxes” and still satisfy your sense of “differences.”

  20. 20.

    Martin

    @Reality Check: Republicans really do think that if they nominate a black guy that they’ll split the black vote, don’t you?

    Here’s a hint – black voters didn’t vote for Obama because he’s black. They voted proportionate to their voter registration, which has been 90%+ Democratic for years. They voted for the Democrat because, unlike half the Republicans, they don’t have to worry about someone proposing a fried chicken and watermelon subsidy during a debate. I’ll give Cain credit for not being in that half.

  21. 21.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    What’s the over/under on King saying something to earn him a place in The Fuck Him With an Acid-Dipped Railroad Spike Hall of Fame?

  23. 23.

    FlipYrWhig

    John King is horrendous. Did y’all see him trying to fill when Obama was about to announce the death of bin Laden? King just kept saying variants of, “Think of that sentence: ‘Osama bin Laden is dead.’ It’s historic.” Blah blah blah. Then back to Blitzer. Then back to King, who would say THE SAME FUCKING THING. Even by cable news “personality” standards, King sucks.

  26. 26.

    Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)

    I hope Ed Rollins has Michelle Bachmann dress in something sexy.

  30. 30.

    Barney

    Sadly the BBC page for it (Terry Pratchett, of course – the important programme) says it’s not going to be available there: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0120dxp

    It was an independent production – KEO Films, though their web site makes no mention of it yet. Perhaps they hold the rights and are looking at selling it abroad. I watched it, and it really is ‘must-see’ for anyone. If it happens to sneak on to YouTube, I’d say there are no ethics problems in watching it. My licence fee has already paid for it, after all, so I give permission. :)

  31. 31.

    TreeBeard

    I watched some of the Pratchett documentary. I couldn’t bear to see some bits like the part where the the doctor was guiding Peter Smedley through the process – let alone the actual dying. I had tears in my eyes at times.

    I don’t want to lose Sir Terry.

  32. 32.

    Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)

    Rick Perry kicked off his presidential run last night at an anti-choice rally in Los Angeles.

    With hysterical and shrill fright, he screamed that Obama is exporting abortion. (quick to the fainting couch).

    http://www.maggiesnotebook.com…..sa-export/

  33. 33.

    lamh34

    I would rather scrape out my fallopian tubes and ovaries with a rusty, dull swiss army knife (too graphic???) than watch this debate.

    Besides not being interested in what any of them have to say, I refuse to give CNN the views or wast my precious DVR queue.

  36. 36.

    lamh34

    I know that there are some Torchwood fans on BJ, so I was wondering if anyone else thinks about the new incarnation on STARZ next month.

    I’ve seen previews (STARZ has been showing it all damn weekend, and a mini-preview after Camelot season finale) and it looks pretty good action-wise. They of course kept Captain Jack, but also Gwen. I love the “bisexuality or unisexuality” of Cap’t Jack, and I’m hoping that they don’t try to sanitize the character for US audiences, especially since it’s on pay cable anyway.

  37. 37.

    Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)

    @JPL:

    If there isn’t a democratic p.enis involved why report on it.

    /fix’d

  39. 39.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Terry Pratchett is dying, yet John King is alive, well, and healthy…and will be profoundly less intelligent than Terry Pratchett even when Pratchett’s Alzheimer’s is full blown.

    There is no mofoing justice, I tells ya.

  40. 40.

    grandpajohn

    @Mike Kay (Chief of Staff):

    Rick Perry kicked off his presidential run last night at an anti-choice rally in Los Angeles.

    `
    And as I walked past my wife’s TV a few minutes ago I saw on one of CNN’s banner headlines, Rick Perry can be a formidable candidate or something like that. I didn’t bother to look anymore as I personally don’t torture myself by watching CNN

  41. 41.

    BGinCHI

    @JPL: Maybe the worst part is that even if/when they report on $6.6 billion missing, they’ll do so as a “sensational story.”

    Except for a few investigative places (where? Nation? New Yorker? Taibbi?) there will be no deeper digging into how this happened and what we can learn from it.

    Our incuriosity is killing us. We are not cats.

  42. 42.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @FlipYrWhig: But his HAIR is

    PERFECT

    !
    (with apologies to Warren Zevon)

    Hmmm. fucked up the formatting there, didn’t I. Oh well.

  43. 43.

    Anonymousbritperson

    The Terry Pratchett documentary was a beautiful and dignified argument for a persons right to choose their moment of death, it was bizarrely uplifting and as a license fee payer I urge you to find ‘some means’ to watch it.

    I know I don’t have a vote over there but is it wrong to point out that all those republican presidential candidates look a ‘bit wrong’? Why isn’t John King asking them about that?

  44. 44.

    dmsilev

    Oh my. Via TPM:

    The New Hampshire debate will rely heavily on audience and social media participation, The Atlantic’s Josh Green reports. In addition to hosting a group of undecided voters who will ask questions, viewers can send their own queries to #CNNDebate on Twitter. The moderator will pass some of them on to the candidates mid-debate.

    This is an opportunity which should not be allowed to pass by.

  45. 45.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @BGinCHI: Al Franken used to be all over this story on his radio show (I assume it’s the same missing pallets of cash). I remember one of the media nerd proms, he talked about asking Susan Page and her husband, also a political reporter, what they knew about it; they had never heard it and assumed the “loud-mouthed former comedian” and noted shrill liberal was making it up. Franken had to get the Very Serious Norm Orstein (IIRC) to confirm it to them.

  46. 46.

    Lolis

    I wonder why Hunstman is not participating. In order to be the Next Great White Hope, voters need to know who the hell you are. Obviously CNN was not picky about letting undeclared candidates participate. Hunstman seems to have no game for all the fears he had raised.

  55. 55.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @TreeBeard:

    He has alzheimers. You ARE losing him little by little every day. There is nothing anyone can do to stop it, other than ending it more quickly. For my money, having seen it happen, a living body becoming empty of the person is much, much harder to bear than a death.

  56. 56.

    slag

    @BGinCHI: Yeah. But even for Multiple Choice Mitt, this one is pretty extreme. The entire ad on that Media Matters link is based on a single statement Obama made in a completely different context than is portrayed in the ad.

    It never ceases to amaze me how little respect Republicans have for their constituents. At some point, one would think that insulting people’s intelligence repeatedly might bring with it some blowback. Apparently, Republican voters really are as stupid as their overlords give them credit for. As much as I’d prefer not to believe that.

  57. 57.

    superluminar

    I was over at my folks earlier, and my dad was watching the Pratchett documentary. I asked how it was, and he replied “well, it’s interesting, not particularly uplifting, though…”

  59. 59.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Southern Beale:

    Sorry Republicans. You’ll have to take the back seat to hockey tonight.

    Sorry, but the 16th gazillionth rerun of a “Gilligan’s Island” episode is far more watchable than Republicans vying to be the sacrificial lamb next year.

  60. 60.

    Josie

    @Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: This is so true. My mother is deep into senile dementia. If she was conscious of her condition at this point, she would be horrified. She was an intelligent, lively person who would not want to live in this situation. We can do nothing but keep her from hurting physically and pay through the nose for palliative care.

  61. 61.

    Zach

    Is anyone else watching the feed of this on CNN.com? They just warmed up the crowd with the national anthem and a benediction. I’m psyched for God Bless America at halftime.

  63. 63.

    Mnemosyne

    @Martin:

    Republicans really do think that if they nominate a black guy that they’ll split the black vote, don’t you?

    But it worked so well when they tried it with Alan Keyes in Illinois! Why wouldn’t they double down on a winning strategy like that one?

  66. 66.

    pseudonymous in nc

    Sadly the BBC page for it (Terry Pratchett, of course – the important programme) says it’s not going to be available there:

    It’s on iPlayer now, just UK only, and while I know that global rights are tricky, I wish the BBC had had the guts to make the leap towards global distribution back before it had its funding slashed. It’s not like that one’s going to show up on PBS any time soon.

    I don’t know if UKNova are taking signups right now, but you’ll find it there.

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