Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

In after Baud. Damn.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

We will not go back.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

In my day, never was longer.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Republicans do not trust women.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Monday Evening Open Thread: Another Unmet Promise

Reader Interactions

164Comments

  2. 2.

    Betty Cracker

    Still trying to get over a stupid cold. Was flipping through the channels and caught a glimpse of Chimpy McFlightsuit stumping on behalf of Brother Jeb. Ewww. I have SO not missed that bastard.

  3. 3.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    Do embedded tweets slow down the loading of the front page for everybody, or is it just me?

    ETA: Waiting for madame and the Nursing Student to show up here at the Cave.

  5. 5.

    piratedan

    seems like every mouth breather for the GOP thinks that POTUS should wait on the SCOTUS appointment….. in short… fuck them. POTUS gets to nominate and you get to be asshats in front of the public again, making up shit about people who do more to serve our nation by interpreting the law than you grandstanding fucksticks.

  7. 7.

    dedc79

    Rubio is so done and he doesn’t even know it:

    Marco Rubio on Monday insisted the immigration reform bill he helped spearhead through the Senate was never intended to become law and that the authors of the bill expected conservatives in the House to make it “even better.”

    “The Senate immigration law was not headed towards becoming law,” he told a questioner at a town hall in Rock Hill, S.C. “Ideally it was headed towards the House, where conservative members of the House were going to make it even better.”

  9. 9.

    RSA

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    Do embedded tweets slow down the loading of the front page for everybody, or is it just me?

    It takes roughly two seconds for this one tweet to be rendered appropriately, in Chrome on my Mac. So the long sequences of tweets in some posts? Yeah, they take forever.

  10. 10.

    eldorado

    have a date. a first date. i’m pretty sure dating while old is the real punishment from getting divorced.

  11. 11.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @piratedan:

    POTUS gets to nominate

    It’s actually more of a requirement, the Constitution says “SHALL”.

    On Joe of the Morning, one of the panelists(GOP pollster lady) said we need to “preserve the balance on the Court”. I nearly broke my monitor bashing my head into it.

  12. 12.

    lamh36

    So apparently, GWB had the nerve to say this while stumping with Jeb

    @edatpost
    GWB: “Americans are angry and frustrated but we do not need someone in the Oval Office who mirrors and inflames our frustration.”

  17. 17.

    dr. bloor

    @lamh36: It’s not really the Grammys unless they figure out how to get another one into Quincy Jones’s or Eric Clapton’s trophy cases. Those guys will still be hauling them in when they’re playing canasta with Scalia.

  19. 19.

    Gimlet

    Politico

    “What Cruz did to Ben Carson was despicable,” Trump told 300 Republicans at the luncheon. “He’s a really bad liar, which is something I hope you’ll watch out for. We’ve got to be very smart, we’ve got to be very careful. You’ve got a very unstable guy in Cruz. He’s nuts.”

  23. 23.

    scav

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Well, then, I guess we have to preserve the balance of the other parts of government and necessarily elect a “liberal” democratic president. Do they even plan for the obvious?

  26. 26.

    Iowa Old Lady

    I enjoy when Rubio or any of them does a faceplant, but then I think someone on that side will be the nominee, so maybe one would be more terrible and thus a loser. But then what if the terrible person wins? What to wish for?

  29. 29.

    scav

    @David *Rafael* Koch: What happened to the exclamation mark on his lapel? Looks like a head mid-explosion.

    Also, SC is apparently frantically googling if Jeb and he are related. could go either way.

  37. 37.

    JPL

    Schumer is saying that asking the President to wait to nominate a candidate for the court, is unprecedented. Maybe tomorrow we can hear Chuck say what is different now, then all the white Presidents before him.

  38. 38.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: he should nominate Senator Cruz. It will cause the meltdown of meltdowns. Senator Cruz holds himself out as both a scholar of the Constitution and a strict Constitutionalist. If you read most conservative/right wing comment sections you’ll often see remarks that the Senator Cruz plan should be two terms (of the presidency) and then life (on the Supreme Court). This is especially true at the firearms sites. No one in the GOP caucus in the Senate could claim he’s not a conservative and they all despise him so much it be a way to get rid of him. And once the President embraces him as a nominee he’s done, completely and irreversibly tainted because the President is the President, even though he’d never accept the nomination.

  39. 39.

    Linda Featheringill

    @lamh36:

    I went to youtube and found a live performance of the Hollywood Vampires. Classic 70s hard rock. Bear in mind that I am so old, they seem normal to me. Other folks might wonder wtf.

  40. 40.

    Gimlet

    Shaping up that Democrats will be on the moral high ground fingers pointing at the Senate Republicans saying “Shame” while the Republicans utter catchy but stupid justifications and the court vacancy remains unfilled until after the election.

  54. 54.

    catclub

    I am waiting with Kevin Drum for Trump to show those newspaper/news links of him opposing the Iraq war
    in 2002 and early 2003.

    Also for Trump to allow open carry on his private golf courses.

  55. 55.

    Adam L Silverman

    @dr. bloor: Again: the President can always pull the nomination. And I don’t see Senator Cruz accepting anything offered by President Obama.

  56. 56.

    Mandalay

    Tweety just said that one thing he admires about Putin is his sense of loyalty to Assad.

    Sarah Palin is an intellectual giant compared to Matthews.

  59. 59.

    The Golux

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    “preserve the balance on the Court”.

    Exactly as they preserved the balance when they replaced Thurgood Marshall with Clarence Thomas.

    What a bunch of frickin’ whiners.

  61. 61.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @catclub:
    I hope he lives as long as Carter because I think he is a miserable, only old man. If the nation ever regains sanity he will be so hated he will not show up in public for anything. When that happens I want him to die a very very old man, alone with his failure and his shame.

  63. 63.

    delk

    Speaking of dog weddings.

    We went to Iowa to get our marriage license (Illinois did not have same-sex marriage yet) during the last primary season. it was between Christmas and New Years.

    After we picked up our license, we drove to the hotel and Santorum’s bus was parked there (taking up a bunch of prime parking spots, dick).

    We walked all over the hotel holding hands and kissing each other hoping to run into Santorum.

    Sadly we didn’t get to see him.

  64. 64.

    Mandalay

    @catclub:

    I am waiting with Kevin Drum for Trump to show those newspaper/news links of him opposing the Iraq war in 2002 and early 2003.

    I’m sorry to to tell you that you will have to keep waiting. Politifact dug deep and concluded that Trump is a lying sack of shit:

    On the Iraq war, Trump said, “I said it loud and clear, ‘You’ll destabilize the Middle East.’ ”

    Maybe Trump felt this way privately, but he made no publicly reported comments in the lead-up to the Iraq War that reflect this sentiment. He certainly did not say it “loud and clear.”

    We could only find one example of Trump commenting on the Iraq War before the invasion, and he seemed apprehensive but not vehemently opposed to the operation. He only started publicly denouncing the war after it started.

    Because he far overstated how loudly he declared his position on the Iraq War, we’re cranking the rating on this statement up to False.

  66. 66.

    divF

    @Adam L Silverman:

    “He who does not risk, cannot win.”
    — Sifu Sun, The Art of War

    “Now life ain’t nothing but poker game
    No two hands quite the same
    But I never saw a winner that didn’t bet.”
    — Merle Travis, Smoke That Cigarette

    I guess it didn’t work so well for Scalia, though.

  69. 69.

    Corner Stone

    @Mandalay:

    Tweety just said that one thing he admires about Putin is his sense of loyalty to Assad.

    He also recounted what a hard on he had when seeing Mubarak back in the day.
    “Why didn’t we stick with him? Why did we abandon such a good guy?”

  70. 70.

    dr. bloor

    @Adam L Silverman: Of course he can pull it, not that he’s going to offer it in the first place. But if he did offer it in some hypothetical universe, Cruz is surely taking it.

    This came up in another context on a couple of other threads, but I’m a little surprised by the number of folks who think you turn down a nomination to the SCOTUS because of the nomination fight, you think you’re being played, or for some other reason. Kamala Harris might have a case given her other options (in principle), although she’s bucking the odds. For everyone else, when the most powerful figure on the face of the planet offers you a chance to serve an unlimited term on the most powerful court in the most powerful country on the planet, you say yes.

  72. 72.

    gogol's wife

    @lamh36:

    I’m watching — they’re about to have a live number from Hamilton. Then I’ll switch back to Antiques Roadshow.

    ETA: Oops, I guess LL Cool J was playin with me. It’s not happening until later.

  73. 73.

    Redshift

    On Joe of the Morning, one of the panelists(GOP pollster lady) said we need to “preserve the balance on the Court”. I nearly broke my monitor bashing my head into it.

    Just another illustration that pretty much every conservative “principle” amounts to nothing more than a thinly veiled “we should get what we want, all the time.”

  75. 75.

    Adam L Silverman

    @different-church-lady: Well some Bernie staffer tweeted out today that anyone named Clinton couldn’t be trusted to pick a Supreme Court justice. Someone quickly tweeted back that the last time someone named Clinton nominated a Supreme Court justice her name was Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

    You all now know what to do.

  78. 78.

    Adam L Silverman

    @dr. bloor: I would agree with you except I don’t see Senator Cruz accepting anything offered by President Obama. Not that I would expect the President to actually do this either.

  86. 86.

    gogol's wife

    Boy the Grammys are bad. They better be doing at least 15 minutes of Hamilton to make up for this.

  87. 87.

    dr. bloor

    @Adam L Silverman: Really? Cruz wouldn’t give a rat’s ass who nominates him to the court. Getting the Presidency is a dicey proposition. On the other hand, he’d be shaping American law and life on the SCOTUS long after Obama got tired of six-figure lecture fees and retired to Kenya. Ambition trumps “principle” for shitstains like Cruz Every. Single. Time.

  90. 90.

    JPL

    Well the long haired dachshund was cute but probably won’t win. The wired haired dachshund is adorable. Is anything on besides Westminster Dog Show?

    I don’t think so…

  94. 94.

    sacrablue

    Looks like I will be stuck with layovers at PHX Sky Harbor Airport on Friday night and again on Sunday night. Does anyone have any suggestions for where to eat in the airport?

  95. 95.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JPL: My two are snoozing with their backs to the TV. What interesting is we had two different American Foxhounds at the dog park today. And a Basenji yesterday. We weren’t there late enough today for the attack Bassets.

  97. 97.

    Hungry Joe

    I’ve boycotted the Grammys since 1978, when A Taste of Honey won the award for Best New Artist … beating out Elvis Costello. The screens were small enough in those days that you could throw something at the TV and miss.

  99. 99.

    Betty Cracker

    Whatever you do, don’t watch Chris Hayes right now. Weigel is on with a most unfortunate mustache.

  106. 106.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Betty Cracker: Weigel is on with a most unfortunate mustache.

    I think President Nixon agrees with you

    Richard M. Nixon ‏@ dick_nixon 8m8 minutes ago
    Is he wearing a cat?

    and Hayes is walking back his piece– was that just tonight? twitter must’ve blown up on him

  110. 110.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Jeb? tied for fifth, with Ben Carson, in South Carolina, allegedly wired for and by the Bushes.

  113. 113.

    catclub

    @efgoldman: there was a local newspaper headline on Scalia about ‘fiery conservative’ and I certainly thought about the flames of hell. So, yes.

  115. 115.

    Gin & Tonic

    @efgoldman: Huh. Could have sworn it was a state holiday, too.

    Hope the fire and brimstone is a good thing, and not to rain down on you and the missus. I used to have an asbestos umbrella, but the mesothelioma lawyers took it away.

  117. 117.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Betty Cracker: I’ve seen a few stickers asking “Do you miss me yet?” juxtaposed beside a photo of a smiling Bush the 43rd. I always feel like rolling down my windows and shouting “no!”

  119. 119.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Frankensteinbeck: I have no idea. I think it might have been some state level staffer somewhere. Personally I think the whole thing is silly. Support who you want. There’s a reason we have secret ballots.

  122. 122.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @The Golux:
    Sorry, I don’t do subtle. About the best I can do is to say I hope for is that he dies a very old man like Ishido in Shogun was promised.

  126. 126.

    Pogonip

    Only gay dogs are allowed to get married.

    A guy I know went to Palm Beach Florida, which is, I gather, a well-known place to have a gay old time even if you are not a Flintstone, bought his dog a shirt that says “I’m The Straight One” (“I assume,” he added parenthetically), and said he might as well have saved his $20 because she would fight her way out of the shirt whenever he tried to put it on her. Says I, “She’s trying to tell you something!”

  129. 129.

    Germy

    I’m waiting patiently for Hamilton. My wife is waiting patiently for Lauren Hill.

    I’m mildly resentful they preempted “Supergirl” for these grammys.

    Also, we sounded like old farts during Taylor Swift’s opening number: “Can you understand what she’s singing? I don’t understand a word…”

  130. 130.

    JPL

    haha.. Where’s John, the Havanese is named Steeler and his favorite activity is watching the Steelers with his dad. Thurston should watch the dog show.

  132. 132.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @Germy:
    Didn’t you get them memo? Ryan took over “Rockin New Years Eve” so where else can they go?

  135. 135.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @catclub:
    If you have not read “Shogun” Ishido is promised by a fortune teller he will die an old man with his feet firmly on the ground. Toranoga has him buried neck deep and allows peasants to saw at his neck with a bamboo saw. It takes him 3 days to die by which time he was a very very old man. Even that is too fast & would allow him to blame others. I want him to rot slowly firm in the knowledge he was the cause of his own suffering.

  136. 136.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @Germy:
    Pasta how I hated his sound! What that man did to saxophone should have been a crime against humanity. But we did wait up to hear that every year

  139. 139.

    NotMax

    Discovered three degrees of separation from Scalia this weekend, when Mom told me she was asked (this was in 1949) if she wanted to take over the Spanish and Italian language classes at Brooklyn College which Scalia’s father had been teaching, as he (apparently unexpectedly) took a leave of absence.

    According to Mom, Prof. Scalia never did return.

    Upshot is she declined the offer as she felt it would be unfair to the students at the school where she was already teaching as she was deep into preparing them for the oral part of the upcoming New York State Regents exam. Actually quite an honor to be offered the position, as she had graduated from college only earlier that same year.

    First time I’d ever heard this story.

  140. 140.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @Germy:
    If there is a hell those two should share a room & be forced to listen to their sound for eternity

  141. 141.

    jl

    Just heard on the news from Ted Cruz that unless the country confirms a real true blue ultra conservative to replace Scalia, we will have a radical liberal 5-4 majority that will erase the Second Amendment and turn the US socialist. (Edit: I think he ended up nattering about ‘rendering our country unrecognizable’ or ‘destroying our way of life’, but by that time I wasn’t really paying attention anymore).

    So, Anthony Kennedy has been an ultra-liberal mole all this time, waiting for this moment (Edit: if this is not a ‘crucial critical juncture’ what is, folks?) to be switched on and start destroying America, for reals? Who knew?

  143. 143.

    Baud

    @jl: I don’t understand. If Obama replaces Scalia, Kennedy becomes irrelevant. The libs can get to 5 without him.

  144. 144.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    South Carolina Poll — PPP — Feb 13 thur 15

    Trump…………35%
    Cruz……………18%
    Rubio………….18%
    Kasich…………10%
    Carson………… 7%
    ¿Jeb?…………….7%◄ (BAM!)

    ahahahhahahahahhahahhahaahahahaahhahahahhahahahahhahha

  146. 146.

    jl

    @Baud: Let’s see: we got Roberts, Alito, Thomas.
    Ginsberg, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Breyer.

    And Kennedy.

    OK, thanks. I guess Cruz decided Kennedy has to be a true blue ultra-conservative in order we be at knife edge crisis.

    I just heard Cruz say it on the news, and I didn’t stop to figure out what he was trying to do yet. I typed, too soon!

  147. 147.

    jl

    @Baud: Should you be out smearing somebody to up your numbers for the SC primary?

    Or, in your case, virtually smearing somebody?

  148. 148.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
    I was kind of pulling for JEB? landing 3rd or 4th just to keep the klown kar tightly packed. Ideally Trump would stick around 35% and the rest would trade 2-4 from state to state until they get to the winner take all states. Then I want trump to finish second a few times. The very best would be for Trump to go to the RNC around 35% with the rest of them trailing in the upper teens. Then after a couple of ballots all hell breaks loose. Of course they will go with someone “safe” like Ryan if not Rubio. That will piss off the Cruz people a lot & cause Trump to complain loudly that he was shafted. He either runs 3rd party or whines loud & long so his diehards stay home. That would be the very best because it could make a huge difference in Senate & House races.

  150. 150.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: And that’s not counting that Constitutional scholar Senator Cruz has decided to job the rubes on the 2nd Amendment thing. The Supreme Court cannot declare an enumerated right in the Bill of Rights unconstitutional or wipe it out. The most they can do, if they get the right case, is roll back Heller to the prior to 2008 status quo. This would mean that there is an explicit right to keep and bear arms in relation to service in the well regulated militia, which has been surpassed/replaced by the National Guard, and an implicit right to keep and bear arms for individual use. While this will inconvenience folks in DC, as well as Chicago as it would wipe out the McDonald ruling, and the folks in California suing to get their county sheriffs to actually issue their concealed carry permits, it isn’t going to over rule the 2nd Amendment. Nor is it going to mean anyone has to turn in their firearms.

  151. 151.

    Germy

    Wait… is Lauryn Hill not going to appear on tonight’s Grammys? I thought she was scheduled to perform, but there’s been no mention of her.

  154. 154.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: It is amazing what people will get worked up about. While not really understanding how the process works and not, seemingly, to care either. I recognize this is an incredibly important issue for a certain percentage of the citizenry, but I wish they actually had a better understanding of the US Constitution, how the Supreme Court works, as well as the Federal District and Appellate courts, and what might or might not/could or could not happen.

    And I get the inconvenience thing. I know cops, transiting through New York state, that have a Federally protected right to carry concealed off duty anywhere provided they have their badge with them, who have been arrested, their personal protection/backup weapon taken, jerked around, and then released without charging with a “we’re all cops, you understand” and only sometimes their firearms. And I know of Americans, who have had to transit well around NY City and state when moving, because even though they were in compliance with the Federal law about transporting secured and unloaded firearms in transit between two points where one may legally posses them, one can and will be arrested, had their weapon/weapons seized, jerked around, sometimes charged, sometimes not in NY state and City – all for doing something they are legally entitled to do as Americans because NY city and state have decided that their state level rules have primacy over Federal law.

    These things go beyond inconvenience. And they should be rectified and people should be made whole. Reversing Heller would have absolutely no impact on them. But having a Democratic president, any Democratic president, appoint one more justice to the Supreme Court is not going to spell the end of the 2nd Amendment.

  160. 160.

    Ruckus

    @Germy:
    Incompetent would be about 10 steps above where they play. It’s not like the state he supposedly represents has a coast line or shipping port that could be used. Oh wait. Nor the dozens of other ports in the rest of the states. And in today’s environment it’s pretty hard to make the case that no one will notice.

  163. 163.

    PurpleGirl

    @Mike G: The video wouldn’t play for me. But I wonder how the people who put the ad together can do something so stupid when using stock footage. Don’t they know what American cities or landscapes look like? Are they outsourcing making the ads? Idiots.

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