Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

“woke” is the new caravan.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

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

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

ha ha ha! Nice try weird people.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

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

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

In my day, never was longer.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

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

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

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Late Night Open Thread: Popular Enough Culture

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From the Vox article:

On Wednesday night, the reelection campaign of Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) announced that it would hold a fundraising dinner with a local celebrity — the author of Game of Thrones. “You could hang out with George RR Martin” in exchange for a donation, an image advertising the event reads. It adds below in smaller print that Senator Udall will be present as well…

Any other news out there that isn’t depressing or horrible or both?

Reader Interactions

56Comments

  3. 3.

    gian

    you’re still free to get a gun and kill kids in Florida. Which for right wingers is a good thing. for me the headline makes me want to vomit.

    BELL, Fla. (AP) — A once-convicted felon killed six of his grandchildren, including an infant, his adult daughter and himself in a shooting at the man’s home in a small North Florida town Thursday, a sheriff said.

    it’s front page everywhere. All I can say is too bad innocent kids were sacrificed to the gun god of killing instead of the gun industry CEOs and their marketing agency leader Wayne L

  7. 7.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Suzanne: You don’t see her using stereotypes of AA bodies in her videos?

    ETA: I offered up fantastic Etta James, and the Meghan Trainor fluff gets the comment? Jesus.

  9. 9.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Mike J: Now, having had quite a scare about the possibility of actually losing Scotland, Cameron and the Tories will stop considering the rich conservatives in The City as their only constituents, and pay more attention to the fact that there are others on the spectrum that need to be listened to.

    Nah, just kidding,

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/9-things-scottish-referendum-campaign-taught-us?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20full-width-1%20full-bento:Bento%20box:Position1:sublinks

  12. 12.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Suzanne: Watch the video. It had the same effect on me that the video for Cee-Lo’s Fuck You did. If the video is the artist’s view of the song, I can no longer subscribe to the song’s implicit message.

  15. 15.

    mdblanche

    @Mike J: And congrats to Sam Wang for calling the result pretty successfully. May he do as well in November.

    It sounds like now Westminster is going to try to rewrite the UK constitution before the next election in May to make good on promises made during the late “Yes” surge that they’re already regretting. Let the infighting begin.

  16. 16.

    Mike J

    @Bill E Pilgrim: They’re right that Brown did a great job. Can we put Ed Miliband on an ice floe and get an opposition leader whose visage doesn’t cause people to want to slash their wrists?

  18. 18.

    Anne Laurie

    @gian: It seems like a genuine tragedy in many ways, and I’d like to wait for some more information before jumping on my hobbyhorse and calling for the parade to begin.

    Those poor kids are dead, and apparently so is the man who killed them. Waiting another 12 or 24 hours before deciding who “we” are going to blame isn’t gonna do them any more harm.

  19. 19.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): From that article:

    “Westminster” is the new “Washington”

    In US, the capital is used as shorthand for a corrupt, self-serving, out-of-touch elite that neither understands nor much cares about the way people live in the rest of the country. In Britain, the name of a central London borough has acquired the same toxicity.

    I’m so proud that the US continues to be a model for the rest of humanity, with our capital city like a giant iridescent clown nose of stupidity, dysfunction, and corruption shining across the entire globe. Snif. Gets you right here. *Honk*

  21. 21.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Suzanne: I could have posted Boom Clap as my asshole song. Would that make you happy? Although, Charli xcx did collaborate with Marina (Sarah, Proud and Tall, introduced me to Marina and the Diamonds – I don’t think the music mattered much to her).

  26. 26.

    RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac)

    I’m bringing along my first Intel Mac. It’s a Mac Pro 1,1 with quad Xeon 2.66s, a 512MB video card, 2 TB of my own drives, and Snow Leopard. After using G4s and G5s for so long, I am unaccustomed to how smooth this Mac is, even with the ton of software the previous owner left on the boot drive.

    I ordered the Snow Leopard DVD earlier this week and I look forward to rebuilding the software end of this thing in my own way.

  29. 29.

    JustRuss

    My head has asploded. George Will on The Roosevelts just said FDR didn’t push the New Deal hard enough when he backed off in 1937. What’s next, cats and dogs living together?

  30. 30.

    gian

    @Anne Laurie:

    convicted felon had gun
    tragedy happened because said felon used said gun.

    California, by way of example has cops go and take guns from people who can’t legally have them,

    Did this bastard steal said gun, fuck if I know. I don’t care. I’m ready for the Bradley AFV, and the Apache choppers to help the cops go door to door and drag this “my gun is my dick” country into the 20th century.. fuck I’d be OK with a C130 with heavy weapons circling to ensure compliance.
    Some people need guns, some people even need guns to kill people. (the dude taking the night deposit from the 7-11 or a liquor store has a real reason to carry) how many children need to die in terror after newtown for other people to feel the same.
    given the world now? maybe another 15,000.

    getting a gun should be harder than buying a joint. period

  37. 37.

    mdblanche

    @Origuy: Well, they’ll be coming up with some new laws in a hurry. The Scottish Parliament was promised more powers and if Cameron and his cronies were to try to forget about that Salmond would quickly remind him. So to dilute that out the Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies will likely get new powers too. And some sort of government will get set up for England, only nobody agrees what form it should take. Scotland has been promised that it will keep getting more money from Westminster per capita than England but the Tory back-benchers are grumbling about that and already don’t trust Cameron to negotiate any of this. It’s gonna be an interesting few months for the UK.

  39. 39.

    Joseph Nobles

    Why am I not shocked that Democrats are fundraising on the serious issue of R+L=J? Serious commentator are serious.

    http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/09/dccc-more-or-less-admits-to-using-rush-limbaugh-petition-195744.html

    Aside: I really don’t get the issue in the above link. Could someone explain it to me? Rush made a reprehensible comment, his spokesperson flat out lied about the context, and yet Dylan Byers found a “both sides.” That’s what I see. If you are constitutionally unable to click on that link, though, I don’t blame you.

  40. 40.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Violet: I think it would be sort of Fleet Street + Westminster, to be equivalent.

    Maybe “Fleetminster”? Except that that sounds like a word meaning “to administer an enema”. Oh wait- perfect!

  42. 42.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Joseph Nobles: What a ridiculous article.

    It started when the DCCC sent a blast email to supporters (and unwitting recipients) urging them to sign a petition calling on Limbaugh’s sponsors to pull their advertising because of remarks [Limbaugh] had made about rape.

    Right, it started there. Not with Rush Limbaugh making the remarks about rape.

    What irked more than a few of our readers was the fact that the DCCC appeared to be fundraising off the serious problem of sexual abuse.

    Right. As opposed to fundraising off of Rush Limbaugh making light of the issue.

    To the conservatives who read Politico, “what irks” them will always be whatever Democrats did.

  43. 43.

    max

    @Bill E Pilgrim: Now, having had quite a scare about the possibility of actually losing Scotland, Cameron and the Tories will stop considering the rich conservatives in The City as their only constituents, and pay more attention to the fact that there are others on the spectrum that need to be listened to. Nah, just kidding.

    Quite. They’re going to take the opportunity to fuck the Scots as hard as they can. That whole devolution thing will be completely in the toilet by December. The Anglosphere’s Elites are nothing if not vindictive.

    It was quite a helpful exercise though; it flushed the right-wing elite and their useful idiots from cover.

    max
    [‘Hangin’ on by their fingernails now.’]

  45. 45.

    divF

    @Bill E Pilgrim: I’m not sure Fleet Street is the right analogy. The British tabloid press doesn’t do the self-important bloviating that is your typical villager’s stock-in-trade, nor do broadcast journalists.

    OTOH, Fleetminster is a catchy name.

  47. 47.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @divF: Not a perfect match to be sure. On the other hand regarding Fleet Street, while we tend to think of it as shorthand for the tabloids, I think in the UK, historically at least, well here:

    Fleet Street is a street in the City of London named after the River Fleet, London’s largest underground river. It was the home of British national newspapers until the 1980s. Even though the last major British news office, Reuters, left in 2005,[1] the term Fleet Street continues to be used as a metonym for the British national press.

    There’s nothing quite like the ingrown economic and social club known as The Village though, that’s for sure.

  49. 49.

    bemused

    I am still getting lectured by a rightwinger that health care is not a right. According to him, it’s more of a personal health preference like drinking sodas all the time, not exercising or buying insurance. Then another chimes in saying a right doesn’t require someone else giving you something. I’m guessing they have read an Ayn Rand book or two.

    @Mnemosyne:

    I like that. “Practicing the Biblical commandment to serve your neighbor.” What a novel idea!/snark. I can’t quite visualize most fundie Christians in this country doing something like this, actually getting to really know their down on their luck neighbors.

  50. 50.

    Sherparick

    I think I will start a write in campaign in my (very Red) congressional district for Tyrion Lannister. Of course most of my neighbors think more along the lines of Tywin.

  51. 51.

    Pogonip

    Re George: a threat to kill Tyrion would not work, because everyone knows the scene will never get written.

  52. 52.

    jayjaybear

    Frankly, I’d avoid any fancy dinner parties in which Martin is involved in any capacity. They tend to go badly…

  53. 53.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Anne Laurie: It’s not a “genuine tragedy” it’s shit that happens all the time in rural florida because the county governments do not NOT NOT take care of their people AT ALL body or soul … in Union County a decade or so ago a trucker who had been up for 23 hours plowed into the back of a minivan full of kids on a rural road. Well, the minivan was stopped for a school bus, the car was crushed like an egg and all the kids died, then grandpa died of a heart attack when he got the news. Union Cty is a known backroad bypass for I-75 if you’ve evading the weigh stations and you want to speed. But everybody piles on Lawtey for enforcing a fucking school zone around a high school that is right smack on 301. (Starke, too, although they’re congested enough and have enough stop lights that you’d be hard pressed to actually be speeding during the school zone at 3pm at a rate where a ticket would really mean anything.)

    Deputies said they got called to that house in Bell all the time. So what does that tell you? Yeah, the gun made it easy. Felon shouldn’t have a gun and private sales should be registered. What is so fuckin’ hard about that. You do it for a car, do it for a gun. But see nobody here gives a shit because it’s somebody else’s family. Fuck them, they deserved it.

    I’ve been to rural regions in other parts of the US and other parts of the world and they’re not like this. Leaden atmosphere. Scary. I know people who live back out there. Two guys I work with, separate incidents, their kid or their kid’s hookup broke and entered the property and robbed them blind. No jobs. Nobody looking out. Nobody cares. Several people: somebody stole their dog (STOLE THEIR DOG, IT’S A LIVING CREATURE) while they were away at work.

    No health care. No food. Social worker in Alachua County (which does more than Gilchrist, trust me on that) told me of a mother who fed the kids corn starch out of a box when food ran out at the end of the month so the baby would stop crying for hunger pains. At least it’s not Haiti and eating dirt? In Czech Republic they have a custom to plant fruit trees outside of town so wanderers will have something to eat. But in America they hire arborists to plant trees that won’t shit anything on the sidewalk to clean up in the fall. The only edible plants are on the UF campus where state police will chase you off the property if you “don’t belong” never mind it is state property … huh … we aren’t citizens in Florida. This isn’t “our” university … it’s “theirs” … Florida Blue Key, Florida agriculture lobby, the developers, the SAA.

    Okay.

  54. 54.

    Another Holocene Human

    @gian: Didn’t have to sell a gun. Private sales don’t have to do bg checks. Because of this, even though straw buying is illegal, it’s impossible to enforce laws against it. Trivially easy for this guy to get a gun.

    Rural cops out here are like “tits on a boar” (so I heard in the trailer park) they show up after the action is over. They’re not going to be a hero and the sheriffs are all good (?) old boys. It’s becoming clearer and clearer why France uses gendarmes in the countryside. Not sure I totally agree with that either but I can see how they would trust a paramilitary, national, centrally accountable, well-trained, redeployable force over local constabulary. (Local constabulary is the British system but it’s also the failed British system, that was replaced with the model developed with the Metropolitan police. Unfortunately the US only implemented about half of what London did–they thought the ‘one half of working class to kill other half of working class’ underpaid armed thug squad would suit all their needs nicely, and nothing’s been done to reform things since the Gilded Age except to allow the police to unionize and increase their pay.)

  55. 55.

    Another Holocene Human

    @divF: No, they do their bloviating on the BBC morning programs. I listen if I want to get my rage on at 4 or 5 AM EDT (not).

  56. 56.

    Another Holocene Human

    @bemused:

    I am still getting lectured by a rightwinger that health care is not a right. According to him, it’s more of a personal health preference like drinking sodas all the time, not exercising or buying insurance.

    Health panacea woo is very popular in these circles. If only you eat the right way, the primitive way, the Bible way, the secret way, you’ll be hale and hearty until age 92, able to bench press 3000lbs like Pat Robertson, as limber as Jack LaLane, and you don’t have the exercise. Just take this potion or pill, eat venison and replace sugar with honey, never eat rice, tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, don’t throw out the mother …. oh, and feminism is the reason for the obesity and diabetes epidemic. Be a real man, taste the rage!

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