Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

T R E 4 5 O N

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

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Consistently wrong since 2002

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

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

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

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

Battle won, war still ongoing.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

This fight is for everything.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

You are here: Home / TV & Movies / Movies / Monday Morning Open Thread: Recap

Monday Morning Open Thread: Recap

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So, this happened.

But then, for the Serious Political News, also this:


(via RealClearPolitics)

Respect, Rep. Ellison!

And I guess this is a pretty fair summary of the evening [warning – continuing autoplay]:


(via the Guardian)

************
Apart from applauding Benedict Cumberbatch as a good sport, what’s on the agenda as we start another week?

Reader Interactions

62Comments

  2. 2.

    Poopyman

    I was tempted to ask what happened at the Oscars, but then I remembered I don’t care, so off I go to risk death on The Beltway ….

  3. 3.

    NotMax

    Glad I didn’t have to be in the same room (or even in the same state) with some of those hideous, vomitous gowns.

  8. 8.

    ThresherK

    @raven: Good luck to you both. Way to be a supportive spouse.

    Trying to figure out what from my computer junkbox will allow me to make a backup of my newly built Win8-ImmediateUpgrade-8.1 box so (should the worst happen) I don’t have to spend a whole weekend recreating from the Win8 disc.

  11. 11.

    Mustang Bobby

    Back to the office after a long weekend with my brother visiting from Seattle so we could both go be judges (and leftie infiltrators) at the Boca Raton Concours d’Elegance car show yesterday. Saw some really cool machines, including a 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz that came with a complete bar set-up, a pad and Cross pen set, and an Arpege perfume atomizer. That was some serious bling in those days. The car cost $13,000 in 1957, which was about the same as a Rolls-Royce, or half of what my parents paid for a five bedroom house on 3/4 acre in Perrysburg, Ohio, that year.

    Also saw a 1930 Minerva AL that came with a complete tool kit and mooring lines, a 1948 Vauxhall Zimmerli, and a 1966 Shelby GT350 that was Mr. Shelby’s personal car.

  16. 16.

    satby

    I have to return my rental car, pick up my repaired car, and then go to a class , support a client at an interview, and then job coach another one. I just run around from place to place in a frenzy to get it all done, and it’s so discouraging that it doesn’t even cover the bills.

    I really like my job, but I need to keep looking for a better paying one.

  18. 18.

    Frankensteinbeck

    That video with Representative Ellison offends the Hell out of me. Not him, of course. But the political situation is warped beyond all reason if this question is even raised. Add ‘shameful’ if it’s asked and the answer isn’t to publicly shame Republicans for that level of disgusting partisanship. On top of all that, it’s a sobering display of how deep and endemic racism is in America that Democrats aren’t crawling out of the woodwork to say what Ellison said.

    EDIT – Hell, George Bush, consistently ranked by historians as one of the five worst presidents of all time, was only accused in the mainstream of incompetence, not ‘hating America’.

  19. 19.

    Mustang Bobby

    It’s -18 F in Interlochen, Michigan, up near Traverse City. I just told a friend there that I’m holding her in the Light, as in Quaker prayer, but in this case let’s make it a heat lamp.

  20. 20.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Frankensteinbeck: Dems are always accused of hating America these days, because we do. We hate the fictional America that conservatives have conjured up from their deepest insecurities, and far prefer the real America with all its messiness even as we acknowledge its shortcomings and work to improve it.

    Get used to it, it says a hell of a lot more about them than it ever will about us.

  21. 21.

    raven

    @Mustang Bobby: Man, Thanksgiving weekend 71. We had a cabin in the woods and drove all the way from Champaign. We got stopped on the way up on the interstate and threw the bag out. We drove back about 100 miles to get it an, amazingly, found the bag but the wind had blow the goods away!

  23. 23.

    Anne Laurie

    @Mustang Bobby: Spousal Unit grew up near Traverse City. Even in this ridiculous New England winter (Boston snowfall total for the season stands at 99.9 inches, so far), he does *not* miss those Michigander winters even one little bit!

  26. 26.

    WereBear

    I am glad I didn’t try to stay up for the Oscars thread. I knew I couldn’t get very deep into it.

    I’d like to do 12-8 for sleep, but my body starts whining around 9:30.

  27. 27.

    Patrick

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Hell, George Bush, consistently ranked by historians as one of the five worst presidents of all time, was only accused in the mainstream of incompetence, not ‘hating America’.

    And Obama, unlike Bush, managed to get bin Laden. The level of discourse in this country is amusing and insulting to say the least. Where the f*** is media in all this?

  29. 29.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Patrick: Now, now. Joe was telling us earlier that Keith Olbermann said mean things about Shrub, so both sides do it. AND the mean demoncrats started it, so there!

  30. 30.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Frankensteinbeck: Jon Stewart once did this bit where John Oliver and Aasif Mandvi argued over whether the Republicans were stupid or evil. “Obama hates America” is so hard to deal with because it’s both. I can’t take it in, so I don’t know what to say about it.

    Anyone who argues there’s no racism involved has to tell me what else would explain this level of furious, malevolent stupidity.

  31. 31.

    geg6

    Oscars disappointed. Homeboy Michael Keaton didn’t win and the gowns, which are usually my only reason for watching were ALL hideously ugly. Not a one in the crowd that I’d pay five cents for.

  33. 33.

    Phylllis

    I really don’t want to head to the office, because this week will be a marathon once I get there and crank up. 29 work days until Spring Break. I can make it, I know I can.

  34. 34.

    Ben Cisco

    Watching the warm-up acts for 2016 and wondering if Dems are going to get off their ass and defend, then I see the DNC is planning a sequel to their smash hit “The Hunt for Hard-Working White Voters (Who May Not Think Obama Lurves America).”

    I’ll say it again: You can win without the bigots – President Obama proved it, TWICE.
    You can’t win without EVERYONE ELSE.

  35. 35.

    Patricia Kayden

    @OzarkHillbilly: Well said. I love America with all of its flaws but I really don’t understand this whole jingoistic “American Exceptionalism” fairytale.

  37. 37.

    Sherparick

    The labeling of President Obama as “an other” and perhaps “disloyal” to “real America,” as well as Democrats just being “soft on terrorism” is a variation of an old, conservative, meme, with a new racial edge. Although the first red scare occurred under J. Mitchell Palmer and the Woodrow Wilson administration (from which much evil was spawned http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Mitchell_Palmer), by the 1930s it had become a regular meme among Conservative Republicans and Neo-confederate Democrats that liberal democrats were fellow travelers and the “New Deal” was an attempt to create communism in America. From the end of WWII to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Communism was the great enemy, both foreign and domestic, and Democrats were constantly on the defensive about being “soft on Communism.” (The most terrible thing against both JFK and LBJ is that they intervened in Vietnam primarily because they feared the domestic political consequences to the Democratic party and their reelection hopes if South Vietnam fell to the “Communists” in the early and mid-sixties.) In 1984, Jeanne Kirkpatrick made a famous speech to the Republican National Convention in which she referred, with very intentional double meaning, to “San Francisco Democrats” (San Francisco is where the Democrats held their convention in 1984), as basically anti-American, pro-communist, and, of course, moral degenerates. The fall of Communism kind of made the “communist sympathizer” tactic kind of silly, but the culture war meme kind substituted it through t he Clinton administration. (Clinton’s draft avoidance was no greater or stranger than Dan Qualye’s, Dick Cheney’s, or George W. Bush’s, but my conservative military friends would flash with fiery anger against Clinton and his “draft dodging, dope smoking, and free love hippie” ways and simply not register or notice that their Republican heroes were chickenhawks). The last 15 years, since 9/11, with America invading and fighting lots of Muslims, has allowed the Right to create a new “Great Sinister Enemy” (Islam) out to destroy “Real America” and the American way of life. And it has allowed White America to once more label “liberals” and “Black of America” as either soft, or “secret allies” with the foreign enemy. Although I could not find the poll, a few months ago I saw one where Conservative Republicans believe “Muslims” make up 15% of the U.S. population, which of course is a rough approximation of the Black population in this country. Also 30% of Republicans believe the President is a “secret Muslim” http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/poll-30-of-republicans-think-obama-is-a-muslim/. With the economy doing better, about the only issue left for Republicans is terrorism and anti-Muslim hysteria to get as many white people as possible to vote for the “Daddy” party to protect them from the “wild and crazy” world out there.

  38. 38.

    The Thin Black Duke

    I think some people don’t understand what the GOP’s game is. Of course they understand that Obama can’t run again, but that isn’t the point. The reason for these ugly and ridiculous attacks on whether Obama is a “real” American is to make the Democratic nominee for POTUS in 2016 to run away from Obama, as Gore ran away from Clinton back in 2000. And we all saw how well that worked out.

  41. 41.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Sherparick: Yeah, I remember those days: “San Francisco” in 1984 meant “gay”, full stop. Kirkpatrick was making a homophobic slur. I guess it still had a secondary meaning of “filthy hippie”, but that was the main connotation.

  43. 43.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: It surely is an old memory. I think I was last thru there in the late 70’s. That walleye could be any # of places, but I still think it was Ely. For whatever that is worth.

  46. 46.

    chopper

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    even thought the current ‘O doesn’t love america’ and ‘O isn’t actually a christian’ stuff isn’t as in-your-face racist as previous paranoid conspiracy garbage was, it’s clearly just the second act of the birther nonsense which was straight-up racist bullshit. second verse, same as the first.

    rudy has to know people of color are seeing right through this shit.

  47. 47.

    chopper

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    exactly. they’re trying to get the obama coalition to stay home in 2016 by any means necessary.

    i worry that hillary is going to take the bait. 2008’s clinton and her advisors were not exactly known for their political acumen.

  48. 48.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Patrick: My guess is you live in a reliably blue state? If I refused to vote for any Dem that didn’t give Obama 100% support, I’d have 2 choices: Vote GOP or stay home.

  49. 49.

    Patrick

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    They don’t have to give 100% support. Hell I disagree with Obama on a number of things. But they can speak out loudly on a basic issue about whether Obama loves America. Is that too much to ask? Hell, all the Dem candidate would have to do is look at Obama’s record and tell the public.

  50. 50.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: The google is my friend. I can’t find one in ELY. Instead it looks like the one I remember is actually some miles south of Ely in Garrison MN, the “Walleye Capitol of the World” . But there are many many more. It would seem walleye are quite revered by our northern brethren, and for good reason.

  51. 51.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Patrick:

    Is that too much to ask?

    Down here in the hills and hollers? Sadly enough, might very well be, tho I suspect most would use the Scott Walker ploy and give an answer that says nothing at all.

  52. 52.

    Ben Cisco

    @Patrick: EXACTLY. This is basic stuff here. Basic, but telling. If you can’t speak to something this simple, how is one expected to nut up when the TOUGH stuff comes along? There’s a reason Kay Hagan’s sitting at home now, along with a fair number of other Dem FORMER office-holders who failed to grasp this point. There will be more joining them if some people don’t wake up. I don’t need lockstep; I do need some measure of intestinal fortitude. If you can’t stand up, go sit down OUT OF THE DAMN WAY – that’s my word to ANY Democratic politician looking for my vote.

  53. 53.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @The Thin Black Duke:
    I don’t think it’s anything that logical or organized. They want the whole world and history to think what they do about Obama. They see a black man in power, and that’s all they see, a terrifying and evil figure. Republicans will fight viciously to make that his image and his legacy. Maybe for a very few it’s a political strategy, but for the vast majority it’s an emotional reaction caused by gut level prejudices.

    EDIT – When it came down to it, Romney really did hate poor people. They are what they act like, angry racist assholes.

  54. 54.

    PurpleGirl

    @Patrick: The corporate media is cheerleading for the Rethuglicans. And forgotten where they come from, the anchor-readers agree with their corporate honchos.

  55. 55.

    Elie

    I believe that this is part of the effort to disrespect and bring low President Obama right before the joint session with Netanyahu…its planned to drive down the perception of respect along with hosting BiBi — it reflects their desperation to stop the Iranian talks and to try to control the message prior to the horrible response to that address… they know its going to be bad and they want to diminish the President as much as possible and get the gumbas pumped up in preparation. It won’t work. There will be nothing but discussion and anger around whatever Bibi says…

    They are destroying the balanced and respected governance that used to characterize the US. We are now a client state to Israel and the military industrial complex that is desperate to have boots on the ground again in the ME. Even Jeb! – who should know better, is jumping aboard that train. Its disgusting and transparent.

  56. 56.

    Elie

    @chopper:

    She’s got quite a few of Obama’s old election team on her team. There was some evidence not too long ago of there being some friction, but who knows. I know that she hasn’t declared yet, but sheesh, it might be a good thing for her to say something in defense of her former boss and whose policies she helped implement?

    Nah!

  57. 57.

    samiam

    Sigh….when you are explaining you are losing.

    Dems are good at governing but suck at messaging. That is why you almost never see Republicans on talk shows trying to explain why something some Dem said is wrong because x,y,z. Because it almost never happens.

  58. 58.

    samiam

    That guy in that video explaining why Obama is such a great patriot blah blah. If he understood anything about messaging he would instead be talking about why Guiliani is a douche bag.

  60. 60.

    AxelFoley

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    I think some people don’t understand what the GOP’s game is. Of course they understand that Obama can’t run again, but that isn’t the point. The reason for these ugly and ridiculous attacks on whether Obama is a “real” American is to make the Democratic nominee for POTUS in 2016 to run away from Obama, as Gore ran away from Clinton back in 2000. And we all saw how well that worked out.

    Bingo.

  61. 61.

    AxelFoley

    @Patrick:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    They don’t have to give 100% support. Hell I disagree with Obama on a number of things. But they can speak out loudly on a basic issue about whether Obama loves America. Is that too much to ask? Hell, all the Dem candidate would have to do is look at Obama’s record and tell the public.

    Exactly this.

  62. 62.

    AxelFoley

    @Ben Cisco:

    @Patrick: EXACTLY. This is basic stuff here. Basic, but telling. If you can’t speak to something this simple, how is one expected to nut up when the TOUGH stuff comes along? There’s a reason Kay Hagan’s sitting at home now, along with a fair number of other Dem FORMER office-holders who failed to grasp this point. There will be more joining them if some people don’t wake up. I don’t need lockstep; I do need some measure of intestinal fortitude. If you can’t stand up, go sit down OUT OF THE DAMN WAY – that’s my word to ANY Democratic politician looking for my vote.

    Word.

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