Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

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

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

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

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Let’s finish the job.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

This blog will pay for itself.

I really should read my own blog.

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

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Come on, man.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

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

The willow is too close to the house.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

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

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

You cannot shame the shameless.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Wednesday Afternoon Open Thread

Reader Interactions

63Comments

  3. 3.

    Brachiator

    Something a little more fun. I was listening to a BBC news story about one of the most popular and highest paid actors in the world, still going strong at age 50.

    Shah Rukh Khan. Bet you were thinking Tom Cruise.

    For his latest movie, “Dilwale,” the producers spent over $1 million to shoot the video for a single song. In Iceland.

    The video is actually kinda fun.

  5. 5.

    Paul in KY

    You could probably get some money for that from a Trumpenlover. Should put it on ebay or craigslist.

  6. 6.

    JPL

    According to friend, a Boston radio station said Brady was going to announce his support of Sanders. It didn’t happen yet though.

  7. 7.

    Gimlet

    Repost – Bizarre.

    Police Detective David Edward Abbott, a member of the Northern Virginia-Washington D.C. Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, committed suicide Tuesday before law enforcement could arrest him on suspicion of sexually abusing minors.

    Abbott, you will recall, was the detective in the noteworthy teen sexting case from July 2014, in which the authorities sought a warrant to take the 17-year-old male suspect to the hospital, inject him with a drug that would give him an erection, photograph his genitals, and compare the photo with existing pictures of his genitals the police had confiscated from his 15-year-old girlfriend’s phone.

    The teen was eventually sentenced to one year of probation. Here’s the kicker: Abbott sued the teen’s lawyer for defamation. The lawyer, Jessica Foster, remarked to the media that the warrant to take pornographic pictures of her client—to be used as evidence that he was guilty of creating child pornography—was “crazy.”

  8. 8.

    catclub

    This is funny. (In a doomsday kind of way) Glad I did not hear/see it live.

    HEWITT: What’s your priority among our nuclear triad?

    TRUMP: Well, first of all, I think we need somebody absolutely that we can trust, who is totally responsible, who really knows what he or she is doing. That is so powerful and so important. And one of the things that I’m frankly most proud of is that in 2003, 2004, I was totally against going into Iraq because you’re going to destabilize the Middle East. I called it. I called it very strongly. And it was very important.

    But we have to be extremely vigilant and extremely careful when it comes to nuclear. Nuclear changes the whole ball game. Frankly, I would have said get out of Syria; get out—if we didn’t have the power of weaponry today. The power is so massive that we can’t just leave areas that 50 years ago or 75 years ago we wouldn’t care. It was hand-to-hand combat.

    The biggest problem this world has today is not President Obama with global warming, which is inconceivable, this is what he’s saying. The biggest problem we have is nuclear—nuclear proliferation and having some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon. That’s in my opinion, that is the single biggest problem that our country faces right now.

    HEWITT: Of the three legs of the triad, though, do you have a priority? I want to go to Senator Rubio after that and ask him.

    TRUMP: I think—I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.

  11. 11.

    Punchy

    before law enforcement could arrest him on suspicion of sexually abusing minors.

    If only there was a good guy with a good pen1s to fight all the bad guys with bad pen1ses. Cockfight at noon?

  13. 13.

    Amir Khalid

    @Brachiator:
    The big stars of Bollywood and the Chinese movie scene don’t make a lot of English movies. But they have huge global followings and are easily as big as the stars of Hollywood. This isn’t noticed much in America’s English-biased entertainment scene.

  16. 16.

    Docg

    Dr. Carson was concerned about death by a thousand pricks. I fear I am missing the names of about 990 other Republican candidates.

  17. 17.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Amir Khalid: There are crossovers like Om Puri and Irrfan Khan and now Priyanka Chopra, but not many.

    SRK is an institution like Amitabh was in his glory days. Hindi movies have an of international following, not just in the subcontinent and among the Indian diaspora but also in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

  18. 18.

    Felonius Monk

    Donald Trump in your food is so revolting, I’d throw the whole thing out and have a hamburger. Even McDees is better than eating Donald Trump. Ugh!

  19. 19.

    benw

    @JPL: Brady announces he is highly supportive of trading for the Bronco’s Emmanuel Sanders, so he can have a decent WR to throw to for a goddam change. Ha! I kill me.

  20. 20.

    Brachiator

    @Amir Khalid:

    The big stars of Bollywood and the Chinese movie scene don’t make a lot of English movies. But they have huge global followings and are easily as big as the stars of Hollywood. This isn’t noticed much in America’s English-biased entertainment scene.

    Yep. But because the Chinese movie market is so lucrative for Hollywood, producers are taking some small notice. The last Transformers movie deliberately included product placements of Chinese brands edited into the movie specifically for Chinese audiences, and included a couple of scenes featuring Chinese stars.

  22. 22.

    Brachiator

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Dilwale seems like a regular Hindi potboiler!

    I know very little about what makes the best Indian movies, but I liked the colors and production and use of the Icelandic locations in the video of the song from Dilwale.

  24. 24.

    catclub

    This was un-amusing:

    Wheaton College, a prominent evangelical school in Illinois, has placed a professor on administrative leave after she posted on Facebook that Muslims and Christians “worship the same God.

  25. 25.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Brachiator: I don’t know either, I am just a snooty East coast liberal with very pronounced likes and dislikes! Also don’t like the “Bollywood” moniker.

    I like a good story well told. Of the current Hindi movie directors I like Sanjay Leela Bhansali also Mani Ratnam.

    Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se (Shahrukh and Manisha Koirala) was one of the better treatments of terrorism ( in the Indian context) I have seen on celluloid.

  26. 26.

    Brachiator

    An appreciation of Japanese actress Setsuko Hara, who recently died at age 95. She had been a favorite actor of director Yasujiro Ozu, and appeared in the wonderful films Late Spring and Tokyo Story. Interestingly enough, she retired from acting in 1963, the year Ozu died.

    “We would sigh or let out a great breath from the depths of our hearts, for what we felt was precisely this: Can it be possible that there is such a woman in this world?” — Japanese novelist Shūsaku Endō, on watching the late film actress Setsuko Hara.

  27. 27.

    Bobby Thomson

    @catclub: it was a dumb question. If the question is do we need more ICBMs, bombers, or subs, someone in the MIC pocket says yes and everyone else says no. But no one on that stage was going to pledge to eliminate a weapons system, or to make any contractors worried about the competition. It’s like asking which leg of a stool is most important.

  28. 28.

    Peale

    I’ve always liked submarines.

    So the biggest threat he sees isn’t much of a threat at all. It definitely isn’t a growing threat.

  29. 29.

    Cacti

    So, the new arch villain in Star Wars is called…Snoke?

    Sounds like something cribbed from bad Harry Potter fan fiction.

  30. 30.

    schrodinger's cat

    In my favorite Indian directors I forgot to add Ashutosh Gowariker who made Lagaan and Swades.

    Here is Shahrukh in his non-singing, non-dancing role in Swades (Literal translation My Country). His character is based on an Aid India activist who left a lucrative job and went back to India to work on rural electrification projects. I didn’t personally know him but knew a lot of other Aid India activists when I lived in the DC metro area.

    The song is sung by A. R. Rahman, who is also the music composer.

  31. 31.

    Miss Bianca

    Taking time out to re-read Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”, and as usual, don’t know whether to be comforted or even more profoundly disturbed by the notion that Americans have been raving bed-wetting hysterics for 250 years or more, The Illuminati! The Masons! The Catholic Menace! Alien and Sedition Acts! And did you know that “Austria is now acting in this country”? It’s true! Samuel Morse told me so! He telegraphed it to me in his seminal work, “Foreign Conspiracies against the Liberties of the United States”.

    From the Illuminati to ISIS…sigh…read it and weep (or laugh, depending on your stomach for almost-indigestible absurdity).

  34. 34.

    bemused

    @Gimlet:

    I remember this story and doubt I’m the only one who instantly thought that there was something very hinky going on with the detective.

  35. 35.

    mai naem mobile

    I watched Bollywood movies in the 70s and my memory is bad acting and really bad dubbing but great Indian dancing and clothing. Russell Peters had a Bollywood joke in his routine about the female and male leads, out of nowhere, seen running in a meadow with lots of wild flowers singing a love song and ,of course, never kissing – just coyly letting you think they’re kissing. No Bollywood movie is complete without that. Even in a desert or in heavy snow.

  37. 37.

    Anoniminous

    @Brachiator:

    If that woman was standing in water, in Iceland, the look of woebegone pain had nothing to do misbegotten love and a WHOLE lot to do with hoping she would still have her toes after the shoot.

  40. 40.

    SixStringFanatic

    Whereas, if a Republican gets elected, we will only have to worry about death by one big prick.

  45. 45.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Brachiator: Iceland is beautiful, song is so so. Dilwale is trying to recreate the magic of Shahrukh Khan and Kajol pairing, which has hugely successful at the box office till Kajol went on a hiatus, got married, had kids etc.

  46. 46.

    geg6

    Gads, Betty, you’re putting me off my own lunch with that. Admittedly, I ate lunch hours ago and am now munching on my mid-afternoon bag of peanut M&Ms.

    I was feeling all organized for the holidays last night but now I’m in a panic. I really hate this holiday, have I mentioned that?

  47. 47.

    Hal

    According to Rubios’s campaign manager last night pre-debate, foreign policy is the senator’s strongbspot because he’s been talking about foreign policy and has traveled extensively. I would love to know what overseas trips Rubio has gone on that would give him so much experience.

    Meanwhile Ted Cruz was on npr a few days ago implying that he would carpet bomb ISIS into oblivion, just like allied forces did to Hussein’s army during the golf war. Here’s hoping ISIS sets up a fixed military base where they all congregate so this can happen. Oh, and minimal civilian casualties. A miracle!

  48. 48.

    Brachiator

    @goblue72:

    A day will come when the whole planet speaks English. Its inevitable

    More likely, the world will speak Mandarin, and write in emoji.

  49. 49.

    Germy

    @Hal:

    Oh, and minimal civilian casualties. A miracle!

    I don’t think Cruz or Trump or any of them care about collateral damage. Didn’t Cruz say as much?

  50. 50.

    Brachiator

    @gogol’s wife:

    No sign of Mnemosyne? I wanted to kvell about Hamilton — I finished listening to it in the car today and could hardly drive, I was crying so hard. It’s a great work of art.

    I think I noted once before that you can download the lyrics from “Hamilton” from the cast album site here.

  52. 52.

    PurpleGirl

    Alain, not sure where to post this so here it goes:

    As of now (3:25 EST) I have a lock with a yellow triangle showing in my URL line. When I try to go to the home page, I get a default page. I was able to get to this post by using the arrow to the side of the page. Also, every time I refresh the page, I get a message from Avast that it is blocking the page (which it doesn’t) because its certificate is invalid. It’s just annoying to keep having that message popup again and again. For about a week or two, it had stopped but then when work began on the site again, the blocking message began again.

  53. 53.

    Brachiator

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    There are many terrible Hollywood movies too. I have become far more forgiving of Hindi movies after enduring crap like the Star Wars prequels.

    The Star Wars prequels are some of the most curiously disappointing films ever made. It’s easy to bash Jar Jar and other mis-steps, but the stranger thing is how Lucas took a bunch of talented actors, most of whom were eager to appear in the films, and then churn out flat, dull, performances from all of them.

    ETA: I don’t know anything about the latest film, “The Force Awakens,” and have my own personal embargo of all reviews and mentions until I see them movie this Friday.

  54. 54.

    Brachiator

    Some Democrats seem to want to give away the store again. Congress is (as always this time of year) working on a last minute bill on the “Tax Extenders” before they bail for the Christmas holidays on the 18th. A good summary at the Forbes site concludes:

    In its current form, the deal is a win for Republicans, as it provides long-sought after permanency in the R&D credit and enhanced Section 179 deductions. And while the Republicans were reluctant to give concessions on the earned income credit, by reducing the tax revenue baseline by $700 billion over the next ten years, it should make future Republican proposals for tax cuts easier to swallow, because the drop in projected revenue won’t look quite as daunting as it otherwise would have.

    Some people just never learn.

  55. 55.

    SFAW

    @Brachiator:

    Lucas took a bunch of talented actors, most of whom were eager to appear in the films, and then churn out flat, dull, performances from all of them.

    Except for Hayden Christensen, of course.

  56. 56.

    catclub

    @Brachiator:

    Some people just never learn.

    So you figure Nancy Pelosi has no idea of what the GOP is doing, or what her caucus will put up with?

    That Harry Reid has shown himself to be incompetent, too.

  57. 57.

    Brachiator

    @catclub:

    So you figure Nancy Pelosi has no idea of what the GOP is doing, or what her caucus will put up with?

    That Harry Reid has shown himself to be incompetent, too.

    Peolosi and Reid and the entire bunch in Congress, and Obama, should have had a comprehensive tax plan ready for whenever the Democrats achieved a majority. Hell, even if they didn’t have a majority.

    Many of the middle class credits in the tax extenders bill are primarily holdovers from the Bill Clinton era. Even though some of these are good (the Earned Income Credit), they need to be rethought.

    The GOP want to make an enhanced section 179 deduction permanent, even though this was designed to be temporary, designed to stimulate the economy, and has not achieved its goal. Some Democrats like this deduction as much as the Republicans.

    Shorter: yeah, my opinion, Pelosi and Reid are dopes here, and Obama failed to press an opportunity for more important tax reform because he preferred to leave the responsibility to Congress, and likes to work for a compromise.

  58. 58.

    mclaren

    @Gimlet:

    Have you noticed that whenever people set out to police other folks’ sexual preferences or sexual proclivities, they invariably wind up getting outed as the biggest deviants of all?

    That guy who headed Ronald Reagan’s pornography task force wound up getting indicted on kiddy porn charges, if memory serves. Same deal with televangelists Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert.

  59. 59.

    mclaren

    @Hal:

    According to Rubios’s campaign manager last night pre-debate, foreign policy is the senator’s strongbspot because he’s been talking about foreign policy and has traveled extensively. I would love to know what overseas trips Rubio has gone on that would give him so much experience.

    Sex tourism trips?

  60. 60.

    mclaren

    @Miss Bianca:

    Taking time out to re-read Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”…

    Good companion books include Erich Hoffer’s The True Believer (1951), Erich Fromm’s Escape From Freedom (1957), Robert Altmeyer’s The Authoritarians (2005), and of course that old time rock-‘n-roll hit, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles McKay (1847).

    My own personal favorite, though, is The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind by Gustave LeBon (1895).

    Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organised crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian — that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings, whom he further tends to resemble by the facility with which he allows himself to be impressed by words and images — which would be entirely without action on each of the isolated individuals composing the crowd — and to be induced to commit acts contrary to his most obvious interests and his best-known habits. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.
    It is for these reasons that juries are seen to deliver verdicts of which each individual juror would disapprove, that parliamentary assemblies adopt laws and measures of which each of their members would disapprove in his own person. Taken separately, the men of the [Frenc Revolutionary] Convention were enlightened citizens of peaceful habits. United in a crowd, they did not hesitate to give their adhesion to the most savage proposals, to guillotine individuals most clearly innocent, and, contrary to their interests, to renounce their inviolability and to decimate themselves.
    It is not only by his acts that the individual in a crowd differs essentially from himself. Even before he has entirely lost his independence, his ideas and feelings have undergone a transformation, and the transformation is so profound as to change the miser into a spendthrift, the sceptic into a believer, the honest man into a criminal, and the coward into a hero.

    LeBon, The Crowd, 1895, op. cit.

    Explains perfectly the American electorate, as well as the Balloon-Juice commentariat.

  62. 62.

    Miss Bianca

    @mclaren:

    I have read “The Authoritarians”, found it fascinating enough to warrant a re-read. Heard of the others, have them on my to-read list! : )

  63. 63.

    Miss Bianca

    @mclaren:

    I am starting to believe that the only people who are really interested in policing other people’s sexual activity are the ones who have some sort of deviancy, or deviant tendencies, themselves…or are afraid they harbor the same.

Comments are closed.