Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

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

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

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

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Second rate reporter says what?

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

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

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Very Late Night Open Thread: Everything is Political

Very Late Night Open Thread: Everything is Political

by | 149 Comments

This post is in: ,

Reader Interactions

149Comments

  1. 1.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    Am I the only one who switched loyalties from Mets to Royals in the bottom of the 13th – and again in the bottom of the 14th – just to get the damned thing over with?

    It being an odd-numbered year, los Gigantes are out of it and the Giva dam is broken.

  2. 2.

    magurakurin

    The world doesn’t get invited to the World Series because what would be the point? All the best players from all over the world are already in MLB teams. And the winner of the seven game series pretty much is, without question, the best baseball team in the world. If the French or the Italians or any other place has issue with it, then they can make a team and see if they can beat the Royals in a seven game series. They won’t be able to. We know it. They know it. Everyone knows it. World Fucking Champions. Simple as that.

  3. 3.

    Mister Papercut

    Hey, check out the big brain on Piers! No one has ever made that observation before. Only now do I well and truly understand why he gets paid the big bucks.

  4. 4.

    Ziggurat

    @magurakurin: I’ve heard NPB referred to AAAA – not quite on the level of MLB, but not exactly a minor league. A mid-major, if you will.

    And according to that analogy, the NPB champion defeating the MLB champion would be a huge upset. Still, it would be pretty cool to have this series.

  5. 5.

    Montanreddog

    British joke from the latter years of Bill Clinton’s presidency…

    Why are the British superior to the Americans?

    1) they speak English
    2) other countries get to play (and win!) at the sports they invented
    3) they only have to get down on one knee before the head of state

  6. 6.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    Expos (and later, Jays) fans have asked the question Morgan has for decades.

    Some think the ’94 strike was simply to keep Montreal from winning the Series after two years of Toronto being champions. Of course, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched when considering how Organised Baseball conspired to ruin the Expos.

    (Obligatory: Sod off, Bud Selig and Jeffrey Loria.)

  7. 7.

    magurakurin

    I live in Japan, so I watch the games with my father-in-law. The level of play is indeed high. I’ve heard the same thing that it is between triple A and the majors. But the winner of the Japan Climax Series would not beat the winner of the World Series. It would be a cool series though. I suspect that the MLB players get paid to much for their team owners to let them do it though.

    There is a series here though were a team of MLB players comes over and plays the league teams here and then plays an all star team. The MLB players don’t win every game, but it isn’t actually an all star team. It is a fun series though. The best Japanese players are in the Majors, though.

  8. 8.

    Amir Khalid

    It’s absurd to speak of a world championship for a sport played only in North America, the Caribbean and three east Asian countries. Especially when the championship in question is actually that of a national league.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    Getting Worldlier

    About as crazy as this: One year after Santos became the first Brazilian to play in the NFL, Orlando became the first from his country to play in the World Series.

  11. 11.

    Baud

    Fascism wears a hairpiece

    Trump supporters chanted ‘USA! USA!’ as student immigration protester was dragged to the ground and kicked

    During his hour-long speech at a rally in Miami last Friday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gave a preview of how his patience with immigration protesters would wear thin.

    “See the first group, I was nice: ‘Oh, take your time,’” Trump said, according to The Huffington Post. “The second group, I was pretty nice. The third group, I’ll be pretty more violent. And the fourth group, I’ll say, ‘Get the hell out of here!’”

    He told the crowd, “You can get ’em out, but don’t hurt ’em.”

    They only heeded half of his words.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    I didn’t watch the game last night. This is sad.

    This evening, just as Game 1 of the World Series was getting underway, the world learned that the father of Royals starter Edinson Volquez died shortly before game time. Edinson Volquez, however, did not. He was told by family members after he left the game in the sixth inning.

  13. 13.

    NotMax

    Grab bag of stories which caught the eye.

    Of note.

    … 58 percent [of the world’s population] live in countries where bloggers or others were jailed for sharing content online on political, social and religious issues, according to the “Freedom on the Net 2015″ report.
    [snip]
    The most free among the 65 countries assessed was Iceland, followed by Estonia, Canada, Germany, Australia, the United States and Japan. Source

    Imdomesiana mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

    Desperate civilians at the epicentre of Indonesia’s haze crisis are taking the fight into their own hands, using whatever meagre resources they have to confront the fires ravaging their communities as they tire of waiting for the government to take action. Source

    Practically scrapoing the surface.

    An unmanned NASA spacecraft is set to make its deepest dive ever into the icy spray emanating from the underwater ocean on Saturn’s moon, Enceladus.
    [snip]
    “This daring flyby will bring the spacecraft within 30 miles (48 kilometers) of the surface of Enceladus’s south polar region,” NASA said in a statement. Source

  14. 14.

    Amir Khalid

    @Baud:
    He’s some piece of work, that Donald Trump.

    @raven:
    Not baloney. People are passionate about baseball, but it just doesn’t the international reach to claim a world championship.
    Besides, the “World Series” is a national club championship, for a league with one non-US team.

  16. 16.

    NotMax

    Ghastly.

    Elsewhere, opposition activists reported that Islamic State militants carried out more destruction and killings in Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra, which the group seized in May.
     
    The Islamic State killed three captives in Palmyra by tying them to Roman-era columns and then blowing up the structures with explosives, activists said Tuesday.
     
    A Palmyra activist who goes by the name Nasser al-Thaer told the Associated Press that the execution of the three captives took place on Monday afternoon at the Palmyra archaeological site. Al-Thaer and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, said the three were civilians but that their identities remain unknown. Source

  17. 17.

    Honus

    Back in the old days, some wag, I think lieblng or red smith, called it the “World Serious” patenting to Amir and Raven i finally understand why.

  18. 18.

    Honus

    Listening not patenting. Spellcheck and lack of editing in mobile combined to produce that semantic disaster.

  20. 20.

    magurakurin

    @Amir Khalid:

    If it is only played in North America, then the winner of the North American championship is…the world champion. Since no one else in the world is playing. Bring a team from Malaysia. Let’s see how they do.

    World Fucking Champions. Booyah.

  21. 21.

    Zinsky

    My beef is that baseball is a summer sport. They will be playing the World Series while we eat Thanksgiving turkey, if they keep dragging this shit out!

  22. 22.

    Amir Khalid

    @magurakurin:
    If you held a baseball championship with every continent except Antarctica represented — you know, like the World Cup in actual international sports — then you could call it a world championship and not have people laughing behind your back.

  23. 23.

    magurakurin

    @Amir Khalid:

    You don’t get it, do you. We don’t give a fuck if people laugh, cry, complain, yell, scream, bitch, moan, whatever. Behind our backs if they are scared in our face if not. Doesn’t matter. Not a world sport, blah blah blah. Whatevah.

    World Fucking Champion Kansas City Royals.

    oh and soccer. You mean corrupt and venal beyond all physical description FIFA soccer? That sport? Whatevah.

  25. 25.

    Ziggurat

    @Amir Khalid: Are people from other continents excluded from playing Major League Baseball? Last I checked, there are absolutely no restrictions on imports, which makes this a curious thing to bitch about.

  26. 26.

    Cervantes

    @Amir Khalid:

    If you were to hold a sepak takraw tournament in which only Malaysian and Indonesian (and possibly southern Thai) teams competed, you could crown the winner “World Champion.”

    That you don’t do such a ridiculous thing is highly to your credit.

  27. 27.

    Amir Khalid

    @magurakurin:
    FIFA has corruption out the wazoo, perfectly true. But football is still by far the most widely played and spectated sport on the planet.

  30. 30.

    OzarkHillbilly

    So Jon Kasich has decided to throw in the towel:

    “Do you know how crazy this election is? Let me tell you something, I’ve about had it with these people,” Kasich said, according to the report. “I want you to know I’m fed up. I’m sick and tired of listening to this nonsense and I’m going to have to call it like it is in this race.”
    ….
    “What’s happened to our party? What’s happened to the conservative movement?” Kasich said to the crowd, according to the publication. “I’m done being polite and listening to this nonsense.”

  31. 31.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    ….
    “What’s happened to our party? What’s happened to the conservative movement?” Kasich said to the crowd, according to the publication. “I’m done being polite and listening to this nonsense.”

    The correct answer is “Newt Gingrich Republicans,” of which Kasich was one.

  35. 35.

    SectionH

    @Amir Khalid:

    Yes, we know. Well, some of us.

    Didn’t the US just WIN the fucking soccer/football WORLDCUP?

    Oh wait, that was just the little women’s minor thing…

  36. 36.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Baud:

    The correct answer is “Newt Gingrich Republicans,” of which Kasich was one.

    That’s rather impolite.

  37. 37.

    Another Holocene Human

    @NotMax: ISIL happened because of the Arab Spring, which happened because of a spike in food prices due to shortages, which occurred because of a perfect storm of climate change induced drought and bankster commodities market fuckery.

    It wasn’t inevitable.

  38. 38.

    magurakurin

    @Amir Khalid:

    But football is still by far the most widely played and spectated sport on the planet.

    so what? What’s the line then? How many people or how many countries have to play a sport before you can have a world champion? Most soccer is played in professional leagues in which the players are from all different countries. The World Cup is an artificial construct. Is the World cup championship team better than the winner of the English Premier League? It’s all just a matter of degrees and artificial lines. Some of the members of the US World Cup team didn’t even speak English. They’d spent their whole lives in Germany. It’s all bullshit anyway. If we want to call the Royals the World Champions and you don’t even play baseball, who the fuck cares?

  39. 39.

    magurakurin

    @Cervantes: No, because whoever won that competition is definitely the world champion. Who could beat them? It doesn’t really matter how many countries play the sport. Those guys are the best at what they do. World Fucking Champions.

  43. 43.

    Another Holocene Human

    @OzarkHillbilly: Without saying what he thinks is wrong, he sounds like he’s mad that the good old days of the Frank Luntz mind control machine are over and he has to pander to TeaPublicans.

    And if the Freepers take it that way, he’s done.

  49. 49.

    Ziggurat

    @Another Holocene Human: Fitting it in the MLB schedule would be rough. Pitchers and catchers in March, and the World Series ends in November.

    Plus, tradition, and all that crap that “baseball guys” throw out because they’re afraid of change.

    The NBA would be more likely to do a Champions Series with the Euroleague, but Adam Silver seems more interested in a mid-winter tournament.

    Speaking of…opening night! Obama watches the Bulls, and Steph drops 40 in 30 on the Pelicans.

  50. 50.

    Cervantes

    @Baud:

    The correct answer is “Newt Gingrich Republicans,” of which Kasich was one.

    About that moniker … Kasich was in Congress long before Gingrich won big in ’94, and was even ranking member on the Budget committee — so he may not have felt he owed that much to Gingrich.

    On the other hand he did vote to impeach Clinton, so perhaps I shouldn’t shed too many tears if you lump him in with Gingrich!

  53. 53.

    Gin & Tonic

    @magurakurin: If we want to call the Royals the World Champions

    Shouldn’t we wait for the outcome of at least three more games before we decide to do that?

  54. 54.

    Cervantes

    @magurakurin:

    you’re such a fucking dick. You’d argue against free blow jobs as far as I can figure.

    No, it’s just that you are so pre-disposed to “think” such lofty thoughts that you couldn’t see I was agreeing with you …

  58. 58.

    bystander

    @Baud: This has gotten zero coverage on teevee so far as I can tell. Imagine if some Ellen Jamesians for Hitlery had beaned a wimpy Sandersite. CNN would have Wolf bringing his jammies to the studio for continuous coverage.

    @OzarkHillbilly: You have to wonder if he’s not thinking of 2020 and running as a Democrat.

  59. 59.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Cervantes: Not wanting to get involved in what is a really ridiculous argument to have, but I have to ask, if you are the best in the world, are you not the world champions? And if one is so invested in saying somebody is not the world champions, is it not incumbent upon them to field a team and prove that somebody is not?

  61. 61.

    Cervantes

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Not wanting to get involved in what is a really ridiculous argument to have

    Me, neither.

    I was just providing Amir Khalid with a counterpoint I thought he might recognize.

    Of course, he could turn around and say: Those sepak takraw organizers are just copying you clowns …

  63. 63.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Amir Khalid: That’s nothing: in 2014 the World Candlepin Bowling Championship was held within walking distance of my house. This is a sport that isn’t played outside of the New England states.

  64. 64.

    Amir Khalid

    @SectionH:
    Women’s football is not a minor sport, and it does of course have a legit world championship with all continents represented save Antarctica. Besides, the men’s sport will likely never see a striker
    — complete a hattrick
    — from the halfway line
    — in the World Cup Final.
    And people in the men’s sport were impressed by the general quality of play.

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    If I am champion of a sport that is regional rather than a global, I can’t really proclaim myself a world champion without inviting mockery.

  65. 65.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Ziggurat:

    Plus, tradition, and all that crap that “baseball guys” throw out because they’re afraid of change.

    Exactly. And they they started having interleague play during the regular season. Soooooo … again, it’s all about the money.

  67. 67.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    Latino Republicans don’t seem like happy campers for some reason.

    OT: Following the tracking of the delivery of my new 50-200 lens, looks like it’s at Magic Mountain now.

  68. 68.

    Another Holocene Human

    @raven: The only person who thinks the women’s game is the same as the men’s game is the person who has never played seriously.

  70. 70.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Amir Khalid:

    And people in the men’s sport were impressed by the general quality of play.

    lol, okay

    it’s okay, men in the US expressed similar sentiments about women’s basketball

    (in the US, anyone in a position to know has been aware for years that the girls’ teams play at a higher level than the boys’ so our relative national teams’ performance is no surprise.)

    and I guess in tennis there was Billie Jean King and Martina Navratirola, although that was before my time

  71. 71.

    Baud

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    Following the tracking of the delivery of my new 50-200 lens, looks like it’s at Magic Mountain now

    Will you still be able to track it once it enters the Mines of Moria?

  72. 72.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Matt McIrvin: I used to watch Candlepin Bowling on tv religiously on Saturday. Man, the things you do when you’re a kid.

    (Candlepin is tough. Less injuries, though, I reckon.)

  74. 74.

    Gimlet

    http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2015/10/27/How-FBI-Could-Derail-Hillary-Clinton-s-Presidential-Run

    James Comey – not Bernie Sanders — is the biggest challenge to Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions, a prospect that should keep the former Secretary of State up at night. The fiercely independent head of the FBI is directing the investigation into Clinton’s use of a personal email server and attendant issues raised during the Benghazi inquiry, which could lead to indictments of the former Secretary of State or her various aides.

    If the probe determines that Hillary or her aides mishandled classified information or obstructed justice, her campaign will likely collapse. (Hence, the rumored possibility that Joe Biden could still emerge as a “draft” candidate.)

  75. 75.

    Just One More Canuck

    Wasn’t the World Series named after/sponsored by the New York World newspaper and just kept the name?

  79. 79.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Another Holocene Human: Yeah. It’s less intimidating to people without a lot of upper-body strength, because the balls are light, but in a scoring sense it’s a harder game. Perfect games are a regular, if not common, occurrence in tenpin; I don’t think one has ever happened in candlepin.

    There are a bunch of these small-ball bowling games that are only played regionally; I get the impression, though, that candlepin is thriving to a greater degree than the rest of them. People used to play duckpin around Washington, DC when I was a kid, but I’ve heard it’s almost gone.

  80. 80.

    Gimlet

    @Baud:

    Comey’s comments on the “Ferguson Effect” show him to reach conclusions without evidence and lean rightward in political thinking at this point in his life-career.

  82. 82.

    Baud

    @Gimlet:

    No doubt. But it’s a whole other level to try to take out the Democratic front runner by falsifying a criminal probe.

  83. 83.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Amir Khalid:

    If I am champion of a sport that is regional rather than a global, I can’t really proclaim myself a world champion without inviting mockery.

    From people who don’t understand the basic meaning of “best in the world”. Why would you care what people that simple minded thought?

  86. 86.

    Gimlet

    @Baud:

    Digby

    If Comey and the FBI are good partisan Republicans they’ll help out any way they can. And that means they may not be able to press charges but you can bet they’ll leak misleading information to feed the hungry little birdies in the press and the wingnut mob.

    Anyway, this is what the wingnuts see as their “trump” card and they are very, very confident they’ve got the win.

  89. 89.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Gimlet: They were very very confidant in 2012 too. Not that they could not win in ’16, but today’s GOP has a talent for self delusion that I have never seen outside of an insane asylum.

  90. 90.

    Gimlet

    During a tense 30-minute meeting at the Coors Event Center, which was described by three sources present, several lower-polling campaigns lashed out at the RNC. They accused the committee of allotting them less-than-hospitable greenroom spaces while unfairly giving lavish ones to higher-polling candidates, such as Donald Trump and Ben Carson.

    Trump was granted a spacious room, complete with plush chairs and a flat-screen TV. Marco Rubio got a theater-type room, packed with leather seats for him and his team of aides. Carly Fiorina’s room had a Jacuzzi.

    Then there was Chris Christie, whose small space was dominated by a toilet. So was Rand Paul’s.

    “This is ridiculous,” fumed Christie’s campaign manager, Ken McKay. “We’re in a restroom.”

    RNC officials did not respond to requests for comment.

  91. 91.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Gimlet: A few years ago, a local tried to teach me to play forty-fives, a card game with surrealistically odd rules whose popularity is limited to several nearby towns in Massachusetts, Cape Breton Island, and parts of New Zealand. But I don’t think it has a World Championship.

  93. 93.

    Gimlet

    @JPL:

    The more articles that hit the front pages and broadcasts about Comey and a partisan outcome to his email investigation, the less credibility anything detrimental has.

  94. 94.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Gimlet: Such wishful thinking. LOL. Poor dears. Nothing has been going their way and I’m sure they’ve figured out that none of the Clown Car Occupants have a chance in hell against Sec Clinton.

  96. 96.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Gimlet: Paul and Christie are running campaigns which appear to be in the toilet so their spaces are quite fitting, imho. Perhaps this is a hint that they need to suspend their campaigns like Walker and Perry.

  97. 97.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Another Holocene Human:

    ISIL happened because of the Arab Spring, …

    Kinda, but it’s more complicated (as everything is). ISIL is basically Baathists in wolf’s clothing:

    Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi was the real name of the Iraqi, whose bony features were softened by a white beard. But no one knew him by that name. Even his best-known pseudonym, Haji Bakr, wasn’t widely known. But that was precisely part of the plan. The former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein’s air defense force had been secretly pulling the strings at IS for years. Former members of the group had repeatedly mentioned him as one of its leading figures. Still, it was never clear what exactly his role was.

    But when the architect of the Islamic State died, he left something behind that he had intended to keep strictly confidential: the blueprint for this state. It is a folder full of handwritten organizational charts, lists and schedules, which describe how a country can be gradually subjugated. SPIEGEL has gained exclusive access to the 31 pages, some consisting of several pages pasted together. They reveal a multilayered composition and directives for action, some already tested and others newly devised for the anarchical situation in Syria’s rebel-held territories. In a sense, the documents are the source code of the most successful terrorist army in recent history.

    Until now, much of the information about IS has come from fighters who had defected and data sets from the IS internal administration seized in Baghdad. But none of this offered an explanation for the group’s meteoric rise to prominence, before air strikes in the late summer of 2014 put a stop to its triumphal march.

    For the first time, the Haji Bakr documents now make it possible to reach conclusions on how the IS leadership is organized and what role former officials in the government of ex-dictator Saddam Hussein play in it. Above all, however, they show how the takeover in northern Syria was planned, making the group’s later advances into Iraq possible in the first place. In addition, months of research undertaken by SPIEGEL in Syria, as well as other newly discovered records, exclusive to SPIEGEL, show that Haji Bakr’s instructions were carried out meticulously.

    W’s Mess-O-Potamia was the first step in creating ISIL.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  100. 100.

    NotMax

    @
    I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    Yup yup. Assigning Arab Spring as instigation is stretching it.

    Protracted drought plus rises in food and fuel (read: kerosene and cooking oils) sparked the initial uprising in Syria. The resultant partial power vacuum provided an entree for Daesh to consolidate in Syria, from Iraq.

  101. 101.

    gene108

    Rep. Pompeo’s on CSPAN’s Washington Journal spouting Benghazi talking points, but I was thinking, if I called in I do not have a set of points handy to shoot him down and even if I did it would not be enough to shut him up.

    I really feel hopeless sometimes about beating Republicans, because they are so smooth in having talking points and sticking to a theme and getting it all over the media.

  102. 102.

    gene108

    @Montanreddog:

    British joke from the latter years of Bill Clinton’s presidency…

    Why are the British superior to the Americans?

    1) they speak English
    2) other countries get to play (and win!) at the sports they invented
    3) they only have to get down on one knee before the head of state

    Just because the Brits never learned to play basketball worth a damn, does not stop the rest of the world from playing it. If the Brits can think up a team sport that becomes an Olympic sport, I’d love to hear it.

    And exporting cricket to former colonies is about the same as baseball being played in Asia, South America and the Caribbean.

  105. 105.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Now if only we could get the media to play relevant clips rom the hearing every time some Republican opened his mouth about it…

  107. 107.

    Paul in KY

    @magurakurin: Y’all haven’t won it yet (this year). Praise not your World Champion, until they actually become World Champions (modern update to old Norse proverb).

  108. 108.

    germy shoemangler

    @debbie: They’re reliving the psychodrama of the Watergate hearings. They were traumatized by what their poor Dick Nixon was subjected to, and want to even the score. Ever democratic administration will be subjected to endless investigations. And they will never be satisfied.

  109. 109.

    p.a.

    @Matt McIrvin: New England? As far as I know (please correct me etc etc) it’s Mass. only. Has it bled into NH?

    Of course béisbol championship is called the World Series; Amrica is the onliest country that matters. USAUSAUSAUSAUSAGABBAGABBAHEY

  110. 110.

    Eric U.

    the MLB doesn’t claim that the World Series winner is the World Champion, that’s just a lazy thing that people do. And speaking of lazy, I say this because they have a page that lists the “MLB World Series Champions” on their web site.

    I think the joke meant to say that the Brits can’t win the sports they invented. When was the last time the Brits won a significant international Cricket match?

    @germy shoemangler: My thought is that the Republicans just realized that these “scandals” are a good electoral and politcial strategy. I can’t imagine that they think running a burglary out of the White House is something that should go without punishment. Not that you could get them to admit to such a thing

  112. 112.

    Gimlet

    @germy shoemangler:

    Not sure about that. I think Nixon is remote, irrelevant history to them.

    Would go more with the themes of “Republicans protecting the common man from overbearing and incompetent government” and a general theme of “Democrats are bad, don’t trust or elect them”.

  114. 114.

    Cervantes

    @Matt McIrvin:

    That’s nothing: in 2014 the World Candlepin Bowling Championship was held within walking distance of my house.

    Great example!

    Next we’ll have fans of the Red Sox or the Yankees wanting to call their team Galactic Champions, because, after all, there’s no one who plays better baseball anywhere in the Milky Way, is there?

    I agree that it’s all silly; but then again, there are worse things about “professional sports” than the names we use for trophies.

  115. 115.

    rikyrah

    George Lucas Gifts $10 Million to Support African American & Hispanic Students at USC’s Film School

    By Tambay A. Obenson | Shadow and Act

    October 27, 2015 at 6:53PM

    The George Lucas Family Foundation has announced a 10 million endowment that will support the recruitment of talented USC School of Cinematic Arts students from communities that are underrepresented in the entertainment industry.

    The gift, which is the largest single donation for student support in the school’s history, will establish The George Lucas Foundation Endowed Student Support Fund for Diversity, which will provide financial support for African American and Hispanic students enrolled at the school, meaning African American or Hispanic students at the undergraduate and graduate levels will receive priority consideration.

    Student support will be split equally between male and female students who will be known as George Lucas Scholars or Mellody Hobson Scholars.

    The first recipients will be awarded for the fall of 2016.

    http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/george-lucas-gifts-10-million-to-support-african-american-hispanic-students-at-uscs-film-school-20151027

  116. 116.

    Cervantes

    @germy shoemangler:

    They’re reliving the psychodrama of the Watergate hearings.

    If they are, it’s a third-hand, bowdlerized version of that psychodrama, cobbled together to fit their current needs.

    How many of them understand what Nixon and his crew actually did?

  117. 117.

    rikyrah

    In bipartisan budget deal, not all ‘cuts’ are created equal
    10/27/15 12:47 PM
    facebook twitter 6 save share group 28
    By Steve Benen
    When Rachel asked Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) last night about the tentative budget agreement between the White House and congressional Republican leaders, the presidential hopeful conceded he hadn’t yet read the agreement, but he was skeptical.

    “Our goal is to expand Social Security benefits [and] to push for a Medicare-for-all single-payer program,” Sanders said. I will not be supportive of cuts in those programs.”

    It’s a safe bet that many progressive policymakers will feel the same way, which may raise doubts about the viability of the newly announced deal.

    In practice, however, there are “cuts” and then there are “cuts.”

    Democrats have quite a few reasons to like the budget deal – $80 billion in sequestration relief goes a long way – on top of the peace of mind that comes with eliminating the possibility of government shutdowns and debt-ceiling crises until 2017.

    But did President Obama accept entitlement cuts in exchange? I’m reluctant to start parsing the meaning of the word “cut,” but the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent talked to a progressive expert this morning who sounded an optimistic note.
    On Medicare and Social Security: Nancy Altman, the president of Social Security Works, a group that strenuously opposes benefits cuts and argues for their expansion, tells me that the deal “doesn’t actually cut benefits or really hurt beneficiaries who aren’t gaming the system.”

    Altman says the Medicare cuts are all on the provider side, which could harm beneficiaries at some point, but it’s not a major concern.
    It’s true that the deal includes “reforms” to the Social Security Disability Insurance program, which was facing major deadlines of its own, and Republicans had previously said they’d only divert funding from Social Security’s retirement insurance program to SSDI if Democrats accepted benefit cuts.

    http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/bipartisan-budget-deal-not-all-cuts-are-created-equal

  119. 119.

    Jeffro

    @Baud: It just occurred to me…we really ought to thank our lucky stars that Trump is not religious (at least not in any sort of convincing way). If he got those folks worked up in addition to all the xenophobes and star-struck rubes, there’s no telling how high his poll numbers would be.

    Actually, there is: just add Carson’s, Huck’s, and half of Cruz’s support to Trump’s numbers.

    Yikes.

    Halloween came early this morning, I guess(!)

  120. 120.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Gimlet: So his campaign isn’t just figuratively in the toilet.

    He should count himself lucky they haven’t kicked him out of the debates. Yet. Take a fuckin’ hint.

  121. 121.

    germy shoemangler

    @debbie:

    Most of them weren’t alive or old enough to follow Watergate!

    I imagine them squirming angrily in their seats while learning about it in high school from some liberal history teacher who looked just like Bernie Sanders. There are people down south reliving the psychodrama of the civil war who weren’t even alive twenty-five years ago.

  122. 122.

    Jeffro

    Also, because it is irritating the crap out of me: one of my cousins posted this (from the Prager U, a right-wing air quote “university”) on his Facebook page yesterday. It’s meant to truly educate folks on the injustice of progressive taxation. See how many distortions, wingnut fantasy tropes, and outright lies you can spot:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6HEH23W_bM

    Why are so many of my fellow GenXers “IGMFY” conservatives? Is it because they were all in their impressionable, formative years while Papa Reagan was in office? Sheesh.

  123. 123.

    Chris

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    What’s happened to our party? What’s happened to the conservative movement?

    What’s happened to the former is that it was taken over by the latter.

  124. 124.

    NotMax

    @Jeffro

    Excellent piece in The Atlantic on just that subject.

    …the devout are significantly more enamored of the casino magnate than their leaders seem to be. Why? For one, although national leaders may be outspoken against Trump, local church leaders are much less likely to speak up. Pastors and other nonprofit heads risk their tax-exempt status if they explicitly endorse campaigns, and, as Kidd points out, the primaries just aren’t discussed formally in most evangelical churches. This leaves a gap, he adds, that many church-goers are filling with talk radio and Fox News, which are relatively friendly to Trump—or at least happy to give him air time.
     
    But there are signs that the gap between leaders and the rank-and-file may truly be closing. A Quinnipiac poll released last week found neurosurgeon and Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson ahead of Trump by eight percentage points in Iowa. The split among Iowa’s white evangelicals is notable: 36 percent favor Carson, compared to just 17 percent for Trump. Source

  127. 127.

    NotMax

    Ooh, snap.

    The Sun-Sentinel, the largest circulation newspaper in the Miami area, said in an editorial published Tuesday night that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio should resign. Source

  128. 128.

    Cervantes

    @Baud:

    Thanks. For some reason, I thought he was part of that crew.

    No denying that Kasich worked with Gingrich (and gladly, most of the time). I just meant he was not newly elected in the “wave” of ’94, not directly indebted to Gingrich and the so-called “Contract with America” for his place at the table.

  131. 131.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Jeffro:

    Is it because they were all in their impressionable, formative years while Papa Reagan was in office?

    Yes. And the Silent Generation had Ike in their impressionable, formative years. I’m a late Baby Boomer, I had Nixon.

  132. 132.

    Chris

    @Jeffro:

    Yeah, I think so. I’ve often heard it said that the political opinions people from in their late teen/young adult years stick with them for the rest of their lives, and anecdotally that seems to be true.

    Dad came of age in the sixties, and by his own admission still votes on the civil rights movement. His wingnut younger brother came of age a decade later and is, well, every stereotype of the Nixon/Reagan Republican voter you could possibly want.

    Same again with my generation – there’s a similar gap between my sister who came of age in the nineties and me who did so in the 2000s, and while we’re both Democrats, she’s much more capitalist than I am. (I’m basically a democratic socialist at this point, as you’d expect from someone who graduated from college in 2009).

    Equally interesting is that my wingnut cousin who’s the same age as I am is still, well, a wingnut – but of the Ron Paul variety. Near as I can tell, he gradually came around between 2008 and 2012 to the idea of holding his nose and voting for the guy who wasn’t the Kenyonesian Socialist Usurper, but basically believes both parties are Big Government corrupt assholes. The catastrophic fallout from the Bush era had an impact on that side of the aisle too, it appears.

  133. 133.

    Chris

    @NotMax:

    …the devout are significantly more enamored of the casino magnate than their leaders seem to be. Why?

    Because “the devout” (a reductive term that assumes the religious right has a monopoly on American religion) tend to be raging bigoted assholes who love it when a politician calls Mexicans murderers and rapists.

    When you hear the word “evangelical,” mentally substitute “segregationist.” It’ll give you a much truer representation of their voting patterns than listening to their hogwash about the baby Jesus.

  134. 134.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Chris: It’s not just “coming of age” but the views you had of who was up then. Like Bill above, I “came of age” politically during the Nixon years, but I hated that motherfucker with the heat of a million suns.

  135. 135.

    Jeffro

    @NotMax: I’m happy to keep the nutters split between Carson and Trump for as long as possible. Trump really can’t push too hard in that regard – it would reveal him pretty quickly as a fraud.

  136. 136.

    Jeffro

    @Paul in KY: He doesn’t and didn’t attend there, just forwarded a link to that cruddy video.

    It’s such stupidity masquerading as insightfulness, it blew me away.

  138. 138.

    Jeffro

    @gene108: Yes. I know a sampling of FB friends and relatives is not actual data about a generation, but jeez. And these are all middle class or higher folks, too.

    They’re not Establishment Rs, and most are not particularly religious – they’re all just kinda greedy, selfish, Rand-worshipping, IGMFY conservatives who grew up hearing Reagan’s nonsense about government always being the problem, not the solution.

  139. 139.

    Matt McIrvin

    @p.a.: There’s candlepin in NH, yes. Funspot way up in Weirs Beach is half tenpin and half candlepin.

    Wikipedia claims that, aside from New England, it’s also played in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and in a couple of oddball places in Ohio.

  140. 140.

    Matt McIrvin

    @gene108: I spent the 1980s as a teenager in western Fairfax County, Virginia. In those days, it was whiter than it is now and pretty conservative. My experience was that the Reagan-loving GenX kids were getting it from their Silent Generation parents, who were old Birchers and Cold Warriors, probably segregationists too.

  142. 142.

    Matt McIrvin

    (There’s this Alex P. Keaton myth that conservative GenXers were rebelling against their hippie boomer parents. But the GenXers I know who actually had hippie boomer parents are super-liberal.)

  144. 144.

    kc

    Calling it the Workd Series is a grotesque display of cultural imperialism and white privilege. It’s literally erasing the rest of the world.

  146. 146.

    Cervantes

    @kc:

    Hey, if Cervantes & Amir want to be on Team Piers Morgan, who are we to argue. :)

    Here’s some advice: don’t be daft.

  147. 147.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Jeffro:

    we really ought to thank our lucky stars that Trump is not religious (at least not in any sort of convincing way). If he got those folks worked up in addition to all the xenophobes and star-struck rubes… just add Carson’s, Huck’s, and half of Cruz’s support to Trump’s numbers.

    Yikes.

    TL;DR version: T. rump + Bible-Thumpin’-Religiosity = Nehemiah Scudder.

    Yikes on a steamroller.

  148. 148.

    different-church-lady

    @NotMax:

    … 58 percent [of the world’s population] live in countries where bloggers or others were jailed for sharing content online on political, social and religious issues, according to the “Freedom on the Net 2015″ report.

    Yeah, but under certain court-ordered conditions someone at the NSA might be allowed to read the e-mail they hoovered up and threw on a hard drive in Utah 3 years ago so WE’RE JUST LIKE EAST GERMANY NOW!

  149. 149.

    different-church-lady

    @Another Holocene Human:

    Candlepin is tough. Less injuries, though, I reckon.

    Candlepin bowling is not “tough” — candlepin bowling is perverse. Which pins go down has absolutely no relationship to where you put the ball.

Comments are closed.