Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

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

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

This fight is for everything.

This blog will pay for itself.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Happy Halloween- Part 1

Reader Interactions

76Comments

  1. 1.

    Elizabelle

    Springlike weather in Northern Virginia.

    Very lightly, very lightly raining. No kids at door for a while now.

    No kids twerking at the door.

  4. 4.

    mdblanche

    Well, that is a fascinating documentary into the mating habits of the common human…

    I shudder to think what the trick in Part 2 is going to be.

  5. 5.

    Elizabelle

    If I knew nothing at all about the history of that photo:

    I would say it was a peep show girl and a high fashion escaped convict, and somehow they have found an audience.

    It’s an Oliver Stone film!

  10. 10.

    burnspbesq

    Holy crap! The Second Circuit stayed the District Court order in the NYPD stop-and-frisk case pending appeal, and went postal on the District Judge for compromising the appearance of impartiality. She’s removed from any future proceedings in the case.

    I was of the view that the district court went overboard, and that the relief would be modified somewhat on appeal, but this is way more than I think anybody expected.

  11. 11.

    Elizabelle

    People, we are old.

    Trio just at the door. Tall kid who’s a banana, the Cookie Monster and …

    a young girl in sort of a New Wavey-type purchased costume.

    “You’re an 80s music kid”, I say.

    “You’re the first one to get that right all night.” Parents, from the dark out on the sidewalk.

  14. 14.

    shortstop

    Why is Joe Manchin such a pain in the ass all the time?

    Hey, was it Cole’s ma who thought that Miley’s tongue was a prosthetic? I’m still laughing at that.

  15. 15.

    JPL

    My son who lives in Sandy Springs, formerly part of Atlanta, just had a red sox player. He gave him extra candy.
    I’m waiting patiently for the five children I expect. haha

  16. 16.

    Tommy

    @Elizabelle: I am 44. Never married and no kids. My brother married into this huge family. Lots of 14, 18, 22 year old people. I never felt so old. I recall being on a beach with them. All those ages I mentioned, ladies. They were not wearing a lot of cloths. Me in a Speedo (not the skin tight one, but skimpy) I might have noted they just wanted to get some sun :). Got me some good will with the women in the family.

  19. 19.

    gene108

    Since I do not get out much, I have a question for the more worldly wise.

    I bought a mixed bag of Hershey brand candy bars to give out tonight. I just got back from work and the odds of me having any trick or treaters stop by at approx 7:30 p.m. EDT is pretty slim, in my opinion and I have a bag of Kit-Kats I can give away.

    Do you think CVS Pharmacy would let me return an unopened bag of candy bars?

    I’ve never tried to return food stuffs, so I’m not sure, if it is possible or if the stores decide once a prepackaged bag of food leaves the owner maybe trying to slip in some poison so no give backs.

  23. 23.

    shortstop

    @gene108: I don’t know, but I’m throwing mine away lest they transfer residence to my boo-tay. I’m not even keeping them around long enough to try returning them.

  24. 24.

    Elizabelle

    @gene108:

    Unopened, for sure.

    I’ve started giving out 3 candy bars per child.

    Some of my neighbors just came by as Barbie dolls, right down to being in a box with “Mattel.”

    I am impressed.

  27. 27.

    Comrade Mary

    @gene108: If even a single kid shows up, give them the whole bag. Make their night.

    (We have a rainy Halloween in Toronto and half my candy is still hanging around. The next kids to show up at my door get everything that’s left.)

  30. 30.

    burnspbesq

    @geg6:

    For most of Bloomberg’s tenure as mayor, the NYPD has taken an aggressive posture (to say the least) about stopping people on the street and frisking them. In theory, cops can do this if they have “reasonable suspicion,” which is something less than probable cause. The stopped and frisked are disproportionately minority, and the stopping and frisking takes place disproportionately in minority and lower-income areas.

    Folks sued in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, claiming that the NYPD was violating people’s Fourth Amendment rights. The case was “assigned to” Judge Shira Scheindlin, who for most of her career has been what wingnuts think of when they say “activist judge.” After a trial that devolved into a battle of statistics expert witnesses, she entered a very far-reaching order that included, among other things, installing an outside monitor at the NYPD charged with making sure that they cleaned up their act.

    Among other things, Judge Scheindlin likes publicity. She gave interviews to the NYT and the New Yorker while the case was pending that pretty clearly telegraphed how it was going to come out.

    The city appealed, and asked for a stay pending appeal. Pretty normal stuff, and it’s really not surprising that the appellate court granted the stay. What I didn’t see coming was the appeals court ripping Judge Scheindlin a new one for her conduct during the trial.

    The Second Circuit hasn’t said anything yet about the merits of the appeal, probably won’t for a year or so, and was careful in its order granting the stay to say that nobobdy should infer anything about the merits of the appeal from the granting of the stay. Standard stuff. But if the Second Circuit ends up remanding the case to the District Court, which is certainly a possibility if it ends up holding that the NYPD was wrong but the remedies are too harsh, the case will be reassigned to a new District Judge. This is pretty extraordinary.

  32. 32.

    NotMax

    @gene108

    Receipts from CVS have a ‘returnable until date X’ printed on them. So long as you bring in the receipt, ought to be no problem.

  33. 33.

    Eric U.

    I usually just wait until some teenagers show up after normal hours and give them the rest of the candy.

  35. 35.

    Dee Loralei

    Raining most of the day in Memphis. Finally stopped a few hours ago, but still no trick or treat kids. Only 3 live on my street though.

    Anyone else doing NaNoWriMo? If so wanna bee writing buddies? Anyone enter the 30 for 30 contest? If yes, look for me on page 141 and vote for me and I’ll reciprocate.

  37. 37.

    Violet

    House across the street is having a massive Halloween party. They’ve got a five year old kid and they’ve invited all his friends and their families. It’s chaos over there. As a result, every trick or treater seems to be gravitating toward their house and missing mine.

    We had a ton of rain today but it stopped a few hours ago and it’s nice, but kind of damp out. Cold front is moving in slowly, but it’s not here enough to take the humidity out of the air yet. Maybe that will slow down the truckloads of kids we usually get. Seriously–trucks show up, kids leap out of the beds, race around the neighborhood and trucks move on. No idea where the kids are from.

  39. 39.

    Elizabelle

    @Violet:

    How fun to go to a H-ween party. The last one I remember, someone dressed up as a Tylenol capsule.

    And it was current news.

  41. 41.

    gene108

    @Elizabelle:

    I cannot get over how quickly the young grow up. Seems faster than for us.

    Nah…

    I’ve just come to the conclusion that we measure time by the amount of change we go throw.

    An infant in constantly changing, so a year is a reaaaaaallllllyyyyyy long time for them.

    Same with little kids. The changes between 3 and 4 years old to 5 and 6 years old is pretty substantial.

    This goes on until some time in your late teens or early 20’s, when the human body stops constantly changing every year and there’s not as much appreciable difference between say 25 and 23 years old.

    At which point, time starts to accelerate for us relative to our childhoods.

    EDIT: I do not have kids, but I think parents vicariously slow the rate of time for themselves through watching their kids grow up. It gives them a constantly changing entity in the house, with which to measure time against.

  42. 42.

    Elizabelle

    A child just showed up and said he was dressed as Steve Goldberg. A computer nerd from Google.

    I had to Google it.

  43. 43.

    Mnemosyne

    The last time I was on candy duty, I think my favorite trick-or-treater was a boy around 10 years old who was completely decked out as Charlie Chaplin. That was impressive.

  49. 49.

    Elizabelle

    @Mnemosyne:

    Charlie Chaplin. That is wonderful.

    Had a child come by dressed as a PacMan game or whatever — lots of neon lights. Thought he’d be very safe in the dark. His sister was a cowgirl.

    The Barbies in boxes win the night.

  53. 53.

    patrick II

    I moved back into a residential neighborhood this fall after years in a condo with no trick-or-treaters. The weather was beautiful (Virginia Beach), and we must have had two hundred kids stop by for candy tonight. All of the neighbors and I sat on our porches to pass out candy and the man across the street got out his lawn tractor, hitched an large open trailer strewn with hay and took kids for a hayride. It was the best Halloween I’ve had since I was a kid.

  55. 55.

    gene108

    @Betty Cracker:

    As a parent, I disagree. Children suck the life out of you, leaving only a dessicated husk in their wake.

    Yeah, but does that make your days go by faster or slower, while being transformed into a dessicated husk?

    For me, there ain’t much difference between this year and last year. Time moves on and I’m staying (relatively) the same. My biggest sense that a decade has past by, since I turned 30, are my 9 year old nephew and six year old niece.

    They’ve changed a lot.

    Otherwise one year just blurs into the next for me, as time goes by seemingly much faster than when I was younger.

  56. 56.

    muddy

    @gene108: The percentage changes as you age. When you’re 5, a year is 20% of your entire life. When you’re 50 a year is only 2% of your total.

    I could always remember how old I was in which years growing up, had my son at 20 and then always knew what year things happened based on his age. Once he became an adult the years have started to blur together. I don’t remember who did what in which year, and I have to stop and count to remember my own age.

    And recently my son told me that now he was having the time-blur start. Of course I wanted to tell him to hurry up and have a kid, that would fix it. However I have taken an oath as a parent not to pester on this account.

    ETA: ALBATROSS!!!

  58. 58.

    Violet

    Parents with kids keep walking right by my house and not coming over. Guess the big Halloween party across the street is too big a distraction. Those that do come over and going to start getting a ton of candy. I don’t want the stuff leftover.

    No sign of the truckloads of kids this Halloween. Maybe the earlier rain really did scare them off.

  60. 60.

    GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)

    son is 17. He is about to leave. I feel younger than ever, and will be free to be independent of parental responsibilities in four years.

    ETA: We’re encouraging him to stay at home and let us pay for his associate’s degree.

  62. 62.

    WaterGirl

    @jeffreyw: no more talking smack about my homer. I even framed the photo of what I think of as homer and the bee. You got a new kittynwhileninwasnaway, I see.

    Edit: the space bar on my iPad is apparently lazy tonight. That plus autocorrect makes things interesting.

  63. 63.

    Mnemosyne

    @Calming influence:

    I tried, but my mom wants to go to Florida instead of coming out to see me. I was just out visiting her a couple of weeks ago, so she’s probably tired of me. ;-)

    But we fly in and out of Burbank whenever we can, not LAX.

  64. 64.

    gene108

    @muddy:

    The percentage changes as you age. When you’re 5, a year is 20% of your entire life. When you’re 50 a year is only 2% of your total.

    I don’t know if the feeling that a year goes by faster as you age is as much to do with the percent change relative to your total age versus the changes you actually go through.

    I don’t think a year feels faster at 39 than it did at say 32 or 33.

  65. 65.

    Burnspbesq

    Kid just face timed me. He is Gatsby for Halloween, so his costume is a period tux. He cleans up better than I ever did.

  67. 67.

    RSR

    O M G We are currently watching the Attenborough narrated Earth series with our kids, and have Life in line next. If that narration pops up during one of those discs, there’s no way I cannot think of this.

  68. 68.

    WaterGirl

    @jeffreyw: That’s the one! So sweet.

    Edit: I don’t owe you some kind of royalty for printing the photo of our boy, do I? I figure if its love, it should be free. :-)

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