Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

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

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

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

In my day, never was longer.

Cancel the cowardly WaPo and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

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

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

Battle won, war still ongoing.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

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

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Democrats are back in array!

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Sunday Evening Open Thread: Everybody Hates the Losers

Sunday Evening Open Thread: Everybody Hates the Losers

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And we’re not just talking about the Cowboys. From NYMag, “World Leaders and Over 1 Million Regular People March in Paris“:

Over 3.7 million people showed up for unity marches across France on Sunday, less than a week after the attacks at Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery store left 17 people (plus three shooters) dead. According to officials, a rally in Paris drew somewhere between 1.2 and 1.6 million attendees alone. Some French news outlets reported that 3 million people protested in Paris, which, if true, would make it the largest demonstration in France’s history.

The Parisian demonstrators were joined by around 40 world leaders, including French President Francois Hollande, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. (For reasons unclear, no American officials attended.) The politicians — some of whom are, obviously, not on the best terms with one another — made a show of linking arms as they led the mostly quiet marchers through the city…

Since some of these world leaders have not always been the staunchest proponents of a free press, not everyone was impressed by their newfound solidarity…

************
Apart from solidarity, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the weekend?

Reader Interactions

108Comments

  1. 1.

    Elizabelle

    My heroine. Thank you, Anne. I was jonesing for a fresh open thread.

    Do we gots a pic of MomSense’s new puppy yet? Action photo, or not.

  2. 2.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Apart from solidarity, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the weekend?

    Puking. Because blatant hypocrisy never did settle well on my stomach.

  4. 4.

    Yurpean

    Here in the UK, we’re having one of our periodic episodes of looking over the Atlantic and laughing at Fox News.

    In this case, it was ‘terrorism expert’ Steven Emerson opening his mouth to allow this particular piece of stupidity to leak out:

    ‘And in Britain, it’s not just no-go zones, there are actually cities like Birmingham which are totally Muslim where non-Muslims simply don’t go in.’

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11338985/Fox-News-terror-expert-says-everyone-in-Birmingham-is-a-Muslim.html

    #foxnewsfacts is currently trending on UK twitter, as we collectively respond by taking the piss…

  5. 5.

    Elizabelle

    @raven: I saw that puppy.

    And the little terrier-wiener dogs.

    All JeffW’s pet pics scream “adoptable! Line up NOW!” They don’t even need bandannas or disco scarves.

  6. 6.

    Mike in NC

    FOX News and the rest of the usual suspects — who always complain about Obama’s wasteful trips overseas — will be outraged that he failed to zip off to Gay Paree today.

  7. 7.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    Eric Holder was there, I think that was an American Official. Hey Conservatives, where was Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney or hell Sarah Palin? A chance to upstage the president. Yeah I know. HEEHEEHEEE!!!

  9. 9.

    Elizabelle

    @Yurpean:

    I watched about 4-5 minutes of Fox News this morning; looking to see what CNN, MSNBC and Fox were serving up. Fox happened to have the best full screen.

    And I did hear someone opining — from his 8 years of living in France? — that there were neighborhoods (Muslim!! Brown people!!) the police would not go into.

    And I was thinking WTF?

    (That was a minute or two after some female voice asked why Obama was NOT THERE. And no one could find Eric Holder on any of the 3 networks …)

    Got to ask: did anyone ever hear why Biden did not go? Just curious. Not being judgmental.

  11. 11.

    Southern Beale

    Today in Fox News “Experts”:

    Fox News commentator apologises after claiming Birmingham is a ‘totally Muslim city where non-Muslims don’t go’

    Talking about the one in England, of course. Some choice excerpts:

    “And in Britain, it’s not just no-go zones, there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.

    “There are parts of London there are actually Muslim and religious police that actually beat and actually wound seriously anyone who doesn’t dress according to traditional Muslim attire.”

    He’s since apologized, saying he relied on other sources. I for one would like to know what they are. Hey, let’s nip this crap in the bud at the source, yes? IF it exists, of course …

  12. 12.

    Elizabelle

    OK. Football on CBS and inane red carpet blather (pre Golden Globes) on NBC. Got it.

    Meanwhile, from The Telegraph:

    a British Airways passenger jet approached supersonic speed this week as it rode a surging jet stream from New York to London.

    The Boeing 777-200 jet reached a ground speed of 745mph as it rode winds of more than 200mph across the Atlantic. At ground level, the speed of sound is 761mph.

    The happy result was a flight time of just five hours and 16 minutes for BA114, which arrived an hour and half before schedule, according to the tracking website, FlightAware.

    Dozens of other flights also benefited from the jet stream’s winter surge, but those same windshave also triggered severe storms across Britain.

    … Although airlines advertise the route at seven hours, it is not uncommon for flights to save an hour in the air, said Alastair Rosenschein, a former British Airways pilot who flew 747s between London and New York.

    “It’s just like surfing. It’s extraordinary how fast you can go,” he said.

    … But while it may help trans-Atlantic passengers arriving from New York, pilots have to plot routes that avoid the high winds when they fly west. And they can be responsible for what is known as “clear air turbulence”, forcing pilots to switch on the fasten seatbelts sign when planes are buffeted by disturbed air surrounding the smooth core. Man-made climate change is blamed for making the problem worse.

  15. 15.

    Southern Beale

    Speaking of entertainment, the husband dragged me to see Inherent Vice this afternoon. Awful movie. Total snore. I fell asleep.

    I don’t think I’ll be seeing any more Paul Thomas Anderson movies. His last movie was a snore, too. And I’m sorry, but if you can’t wrap up a film in under 2/12 hours I have no use for you.

  17. 17.

    Violet

    @Elizabelle: Had that happen in December. Flight arrived about an hour and forty-five minutes early. Since it arrived early in the morning anyway I was stuck waiting for the person who was going to pick me up. Who wants to get up at 5:00 a.m. to see if a flight has arrived earlier than expected?

    The return flight was rough. Took an extra hour and they had to swing way south to avoid the stronger winds.

  18. 18.

    Elizabelle

    @Southern Beale: Had that on a bit, and need to see it one of these days, but not today.

    Thanks, though.

    John Huston worked on that film. He was a contract writer. Maltese Falcon was on earlier today. (Huston wrote and directed that one. I had not known that. Insanely talented guy.)

    I heart TCM.

  20. 20.

    Iowa Old Lady

    We went to an open house. One of Mr IOL’s bridge partners won 100 bottles of wine in a pre-Christmas charity raffle and wanted to use up some of them. So she invited about 100 people and had great finger food to go with the wine. Those 100 people finished 7 bottles of wine completely and half-finished another 7. All I can say is these were very temperate people. Having accounted for half a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc all by myself, I don’t know what they were doing.

    The sad news is the hostess has to pay taxes on the value of the 100 bottles that the donor set.

  22. 22.

    jnfr

    Red Carpet starts in half an hour for the Golden Globes tonight. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in their last GG stint. I can’t wait!

  25. 25.

    Pogonip

    @Yurpean: So how are interfaith relations in Birmingham, England?

    I’m in the Midwestern U.S., in a town with darn near every religion you can think of, and we all get along just fine. I often wish we could export it.

  26. 26.

    Roger Moore

    @Mike in NC:
    It’s very simple: whatever Obama does is wrong. If there was some doubt about the right course, we can tell which one is wrong because that’s the one Obama took. If the right choice is obvious and Obama takes it, he’ll still somehow manage to mess it up by being too serious, not serious enough, too outspoken, not forceful enough, etc.

  30. 30.

    Southern Beale

    Those of us of a certain age remember back in the 1970s when hijackings were common. That was terrorism of 40 years ago. Don’t know that people today really remember what that was like. Every time you went on an international flight you thought about it.

  33. 33.

    Roger Moore

    @Southern Beale:

    He’s since apologized, saying he relied on other sources. I for one would like to know what they are.

    I would assume it’s something like Gates of Vienna or Stormfront that he would be embarrassed to admit to reading, much less repeating on-air.

  35. 35.

    raven

    From IMDB

    t’s also important to remember that many of Inherent Vice’s viewers haven’t read the book. I can’t imagine how wild of a ride Inherent Vice will be for them. It’ll certainly be a confusing experience, somewhere between trippy and surreal, almost Lynchian in its opaqueness and lack of narrative continuity. Perhaps it can best be summed up by the words of a girl who sat behind me at PTA’s “On Cinema” talk at the New York Film Festival the day after Inherent Vice’s world premiere: “It was good, but don’t ask me to tell you what happened.” This confusion and general inaccessibility will turn people off, much like The Master left some people enamored and others disappointed and unfulfilled.

  38. 38.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Roger Moore: Apparently common sense wasn’t one of them. If something sounds as unlikely as that does, you’d think one would hesitate. But no, they interpret “unlikely” as “shocking” and forge right ahead.

  39. 39.

    Mike J

    @raven: I’d be shocked if the book didn’t do that to some people, and it was probably more accessible than some of his.

    I’m just glad somebody took a real stab at a Pynchon book and didn’t try to clean it up too much.

  41. 41.

    Roger Moore

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    If something sounds as unlikely as that does, you’d think one would hesitate.

    You only think that because you live outside the right-wing loon cocoon. Everyone living inside the cocoon knows that Muslims are totally taking over Europe, so claims that seem to support that basic worldview are seen as inherently plausible. Shorter: it may sound implausible to you, but not to a right-wing loon.

  42. 42.

    max

    Since some of these world leaders have not always been the staunchest proponents of a free press, not everyone was impressed by their newfound solidarity…

    BBC News (World) @BBCWorld · 8 hours ago
    Tighter internet surveillance “urgently” needed to foil jihadists, governments agree in Paris http://bbc.in/1w8JABU

    They don’t believe in a free press, they believe they’re the only ones allowed to invade foreign countries and kill people.

    @Southern Beale: Those of us of a certain age remember back in the 1970s when hijackings were common. That was terrorism of 40 years ago. Don’t know that people today really remember what that was like. Every time you went on an international flight you thought about it.

    And some of us have read the history books on the ‘anarchism’ terror sprees of the 1880s-1920s, and how useless governments were then as well.

    max
    [‘Maybe the headline should’ve have been, ‘World Leaders Celebrate End of Free Speech’.’]

  43. 43.

    aimai

    On the subject of World Leaders who are horrible on civil rights and free speech “linking arms” and marching in Paris–well, “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.” Rather than worrying that these guys are polishing their resumes or images realize that they are being forced to bend the knee to a higher virtue and that their own people may hold them accountable. At least they feel the need to appear virtuous, that’s something.

  47. 47.

    Southern Beale

    @Roger Moore:

    I would assume it’s something like Gates of Vienna or Stormfront that he would be embarrassed to admit to reading, much less repeating on-air.

    Which is exactly why we need to find out, so we can further prove to Idiot America that Fox Is Not News.

    With all of the opportunities to thoroughly discredit a competitor I do not understand for the life of me why fellow journalists do not do so.

  48. 48.

    beth

    @Roger Moore: I’ve been seeing that thing about “no-go cities” in comments the last week. It’s the latest right wing shibboleth. They claim Dearborn Michigan is so scary, dangerously Muslimy that even the police won’t go there. I was there last summer and saw plenty of non-Muslims walking around. Funny, huh?

  50. 50.

    Elizabelle

    @raven: If John Huston had never done anything but Noah Cross, he’d be memorable.

    But you look at his work, and his life, and if he was not real, you would not believe it.

    Which does not make him the easiest guy to live with. But what talent.

  52. 52.

    Roger Moore

    @beth:

    I was there last summer and saw plenty of non-Muslims walking around.

    Do you really expect anyone to believe that? By your own admission, you went there and were allowed to leave alive. That’s sufficient proof that you are one of Them, so your propaganda bleatings can’t be taken seriously.

  54. 54.

    Southern Beale

    @Elizabelle:

    Husband read the book. I did not. That said, I stand by my assessment that the film is a huge snore.

    For that matter, so was The Master. I really tried to like that film and I thought Phillip Seymour Hoffman gave a great performance but it just put me to sleep. As did Inherent Vice, I might add. I can stay home and take a nap for free, I don’t need to spend $10 to do so.

  57. 57.

    raven

    @Elizabelle: And then there is this

    The Other Side of the Wind is an unfinished film directed by Orson Welles, shot between 1970 and 1976, and starring John Huston, Bob Random, Peter Bogdanovich, Susan Strasberg and Oja Kodar, and is a satire of both the passing of Classic Hollywood, and the avant-garde film-makers of the New Hollywood of the 1970s.

  59. 59.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Why couldn’t those gunmen who shot up Charlie do us all a favor and shoot up Jake Tapper?

  60. 60.

    Southern Beale

    @beltane:

    OH yeah I remember the IRA bombers. I remember being in London in 1979 and seeing signs on all the tubes about unattended packages. I remember asking my mom, what’s the big deal about unattended packages? She said, “it could be a bomb.” Freaked me out.

    I also remember being at airports in Italy and seeing military police with heavy artillery guarding the ticketing area.

  63. 63.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Southern Beale: My brother did his medical degree on the Army’s dime and wound up serving in Berlin when the wall was still up. They socialized with British officers too, and he says he never got in a car with a Brit who didn’t check under it for a bomb first. The British unit had just come from Belfast.

  64. 64.

    beltane

    @Southern Beale: Oh yes, the Red Brigades were responsible for numerous bombings, kidnappings, and the murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro. There was also a lot of violence carried out by Basque separatists in Spain. In many ways, Europe is quite a bit more staid now than it was at any time in the past.

  70. 70.

    Southern Beale

    @beltane:

    In the early ’80s I was walking through a street in Athens, Greece with a friend, it was night-time. And we came upon a crowd and walked right up on a dead body covered in a sheet with blood all over the ground. Police hadn’t sufficiently barricaded the crime scene, I guess. Turns out it was the killing of an American military person. It was quite a scandal and very infamous murder. Wish I could remember the victim’s name, now. I think it was 1983?

  72. 72.

    Cervantes

    @Yurpean: Quoting:

    ‘And in Britain, it’s not just no-go zones, there are actually cities like Birmingham which are totally Muslim where non-Muslims simply don’t go in.’

    Good grief.

  73. 73.

    KG

    At the Pond to watch the ducks retire Teemu Selanne’s number. Kinda cool, first time I’ll get to see a number retired in person

  74. 74.

    raven

    @Southern Beale: Naval Officer Assassinated in Greece, November 15, 1983: A U.S. Navy officer was shot by the November 17 terrorist group in Athens, Greece, while his car was stopped at a traffic light.

  76. 76.

    Cervantes

    @HinTN:

    The book was a disaster, too. A truly disappointing piece of drivel.

    Lighter than the usual, yes, but not as bad as all that, surely?

  77. 77.

    JPL

    @Cervantes: He did apologize to the city and plans on donating to a local charity. What he won’t do is apologize on Fox and Friends in the morning. Dumbing down of America.

  78. 78.

    Anne Laurie

    @beltane:

    The perpetrators were all certainly baptized Christians so no harm no foul.

    “No they weren’t, they were Catholics!!!” (/Baptist)

  79. 79.

    MattF

    @beltane: A good point. You’ve got late 19th century Russia, pre-WWI Serbia, post-WWI Germany as examples. So, blaming the baaad Muslims kind of misses all the history.

  80. 80.

    NotMax

    @Yurpean

    The Birmingham Gazette, back around the beginning of the 20th century, sported a strange (but rigorously honest) promotional motto under its name on the front page:

    Largest Sale – With One Exception – Of Any Provincial Morning Newspaper

  83. 83.

    beltane

    @MattF: Imagine the fun that would have been had during the Reformation if cheap, easy to build explosives were available.

  84. 84.

    scav

    I vaguely remember that the guns were out actively guarding the FNAC in Paris from the dreaded Basques the first time I was there. And honestly forget which of the scaries brought them out in the street on my latest visit. Guarding the Irish from the Irish was my first (childhood vacation) introduction to the full-deal package. It actually looked like all the things showed on the TV with chickenwired bus windows. All of which no longer counts as terrorism I guess.

  85. 85.

    Elizabelle

    @raven: I have not seen Wise Blood. Had never heard about it until earlier today.

    The Film Center at Lincoln Center in NYC just did a retrospective on John Huston. Amazing breadth of films.

    He’s got John Wayne in a 19th century drama about Japan. Who knew?

    This year I resolve to try to get through some of William Faulkner’s novels (hear you have to do that just stream of consciousness; don’t analyze midstream) and see some John Huston movies. I will not make it through either artist’s catalogue in 2015.

    And learn to make pimiento cheese.

  86. 86.

    sm*t cl*de

    a British Airways passenger jet approached supersonic speed this week as it rode a surging jet stream from New York to London.
    The Boeing 777-200 jet reached a ground speed of 745mph as it rode winds of more than 200mph across the Atlantic. At ground level, the speed of sound is 761mph.

    … and with a tailwind of 200 mph, the speed of sound (in the direction of travel) is about 961 mph, so No, the jet did not approach supersonic speed.

    The Daily Torygraph is in no position to poke the borax at Fox stupidity.

  87. 87.

    raven

    @Elizabelle: Get the DVD and watch the interview with screenwriter Benedict Fitzgerald. Flannery O’Connor was his babysitter down there in Milledgeville an it’s really interesting.

  88. 88.

    Southern Beale

    @raven:

    Yes! That’s it!

    I had been on Milos for my birthday (Nov. 11) and we had gone back to Athens and were on our way back to .. can’t remember where, were flying home soon for Thanksgiving. Horrifying.

  94. 94.

    Heliopause

    End of the line for Peyton? It’s not that he couldn’t still play, but he’s never been on a team that didn’t completely revolve around him, and it doesn’t seem like he can single-handedly win games anymore. So, time to hang ’em up?

  95. 95.

    Elizabelle

    @raven:

    Will do. Sounds well worth ordering.

    Ordered a DVD of “the complete” Fritz Lang Metropolis today. With restored footage, found in Argentina in 2008 (although, sadly, in pretty rough shape).

    I know cooler kids use Netflix, but I still love DVDs for the features and so I can pause or watch in spurts without committing to sit through the whole thing. (Real hard for Metropolis. 2:45 running time)

  97. 97.

    Elizabelle

    @raven:

    Also: last night, I saw my first ever Chuck Norris movie. TCM aired “Forced Vengeance” overnight.

    Liked it a lot. Filmed and released in Hong Kong 17 years before it reverted to China. Sense of place. Climbing hills; Mercedes limos. Water taxis. Narrow alleys through bazaars (or whatever you call them in Asia) and even some workaday brothels.

    Chuck Norris. Says his lines. I would not say “acts.” That is a stretch. But he had some good lines.

    And most of the other actors (especially actresses) were there as placekeepers.

    But it was still kind of charming, and not too violent. Low expectations. It was fun.

  100. 100.

    Elizabelle

    @raven: Quel surprise.

    My nephew was assigned to make a puppet from a book he read in elementary school.

    He read a bio of Chuck Norris.

    He made a really great felt puppet, in martial arts garb. Extra material left over, so I made “Chuck Norris’s dog” and insisted he take that puppet in with him too.

  103. 103.

    Anne Laurie

    @Elizabelle:

    I know cooler kids use Netflix, but I still love DVDs for the features and so I can pause or watch in spurts without committing to sit through the whole thing.

    I love DVDs too. But you can pause ‘streaming’ Netflix videos — they have the same pop-up black bar as YouTube does. When we were on dial-up, pausing for more than a minute would cause my PC to ‘drop’ the stream, but it would automatically re-boot at the right place when I reloaded. And I’ve never had a pause-&-drop problem now that we’ve got Fios, not even once when I forgot I had a tab open & left Netflix ‘paused’ overnight!

  106. 106.

    Citizen_X

    @beltane:

    Imagine the fun that would have been had during the Reformation if cheap, easy to build explosives were available.

    What am I, chopped liver?

    /Guy Fawkes

  107. 107.

    Hunter

    “For reasons unclear, no American officials attended.”

    From another report I read, the American ambassador to France attended. I don’t know where Obama was, since I don’t keep track of his movements minute by minute.

    So, where was Putin?

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