Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

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

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

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

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

Not all heroes wear capes.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

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

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

This really is a full service blog.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

In my day, never was longer.

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Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

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90Comments

  5. 5.

    JPL

    @Patricia Kayden: Since football was talked about on other threads, why not.

    I guess a Trump supporter just grabbed a protester by the neck and punched him. Not sure if he was one of the deplorables though.

  7. 7.

    Patricia Kayden

    @raven: My Hubby still watches every game and actually has Dish TV so he can watch every game. I cannot understand what the hell is going on in football no matter how many times he tries to explain it to me so I’ve given up. I’ll stick to tennis and soccer.

  9. 9.

    Patricia Kayden

    @JPL: So Trump supporters are still violently attacking people? Nice to know. I moved to this country in 1995. I can honestly say that I cannot remember any violence at political rallies before Trump. Not saying that it never happened but Trump has certainly coarsened politics and Republicans should never be allowed to live down his campaign.

  13. 13.

    Seanly

    No spoilers! We’re having my no-TV owning Steelers-fan friend over to watch the game. Since we live in the Mountain West, we won’t be able to start watching for another hour & a half. We’ll catch up from the DVR by halftime.

  15. 15.

    Davebo

    @raven:

    If only you represented.. well almost any demographic.

    That’s not true, you’ve got the bitchy curmudgeon demographic locked in! ;0)

  19. 19.

    MomSense

    Oldest kid just texted me from the road (his partner is driving) and he is sooo happy to be on his way but he was worried about his little brother. Little brother turned down dinner so I went to check on him. I stopped outside his room where I could see him cuddled up with the dog tearily telling her how sad he is now that both his brothers have left.

    I think he’s getting a trip to Austin for Christmas.

  21. 21.

    JAFD

    Everton went into Sunderland’s Stadium of Light this evening, came home 0-3 winners, unbeaten so far. Hat trick for Lukaku in 11 minutes.

    GO TOFFIES !

    (Used to be sticking together for old Jersey boy Tim Howard, but even tho he’s left, still a Everton fan.)

  22. 22.

    Kay Eye

    It’s not the football, it’s the soap opera. I got totally wrapped up in the Seattle Seahawks because Richard Sherman was maligned in the press for not being a polite and proper humble good sport. That’s over, so I’ve moved on to college football and Tyrone Swoopes at UT Austin, horribly abused in the local press, though not as horribly as, say, Hillary Clinton. Charlie Strong figured out where he fit in on that team and now he’s a major local hero, huge asset, and scorer. I’m ready for another football soap opera. I don’t much like football without it.

  24. 24.

    raven

    @Davebo: What curmudgeon ? When I started coming here there were threads for almost every kind of football and lots of college hoops. Now there is no college and the only NFL is when the Steelers play. No body gives a fuck is a simple observation.

  26. 26.

    lamh36

    Is the Steelers the team with the rapist, the spouse beater or the cheater?

    Oh wait…it’s the NFL, so it could actually be all three on one team couldn’t it.

  28. 28.

    Uncle Cosmo

    Stealers vs Foreskins? That sounds like a job for my preferred method of double-forfeiture, Q. D. Meteor…

    …except that I really, really, really want the Tar&Urine to faceplant like Pig Ben flying off his motorcycle & intersecting that windshield a coupla years ago. And my nephew-by-marriage & father of my favorite (& so far only) grandniece is a lifelong Ethnic Slurs fan who comes by it honestly (having grown up in the DC ‘burbs).

    So: CONFUSION (& contusions) TO THE SQUEALERS!

  31. 31.

    Archon

    If it wasn’t for watching football I would have absolutely nothing in common with about a third of Americans.

    You get rid of football and I have as much in common with your average white, rural conservative as I do with an English speaking Frenchmen.

  35. 35.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Omnes Omnibus: I remember seeing that on Rachel Maddow’s show. You’re right. I had forgotten that. But the difference is that Rand Paul didn’t cheer on the curb stomper, to the best of my recollection.

  38. 38.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Pogonip: I grew up in Canada. When I left, the Canadian economy was going through a bit of a slump but it appears to have bounced back since then. Canada was a wonderful place to grow up in. Left to come to grad school, got married, got my citizenship here and never went back.

    The U.S. is a great country but it definitely has a dog-eat-dog quality about it that you won’t find in Canada, which is pretty much a democratic socialist country (subsidized healthcare, strict gun control laws, high taxes, strong safety net). One of the biggest differences is how much of a role religion plays in politics in the U.S. versus Canada where I don’t recall it ever being brought up by any politician. Here it seems as if you aren’t religious, you are ineligible to be considered seriously as a Presidential candidate.

    I have to say though that despite its shortcomings, the U.S. is a great place to live if you have a good job, health benefits and live in a safe neighborhood so I have no complaints on a personal level.

  39. 39.

    PPCLI

    @Patricia Kayden: Nor did Rand Paul announce, at any point in his political career, that if anyone were charged for kicking the crap out of a protester, Paul would pay his legal fees.
    Yet some other candidate did do that. I can’t remember his name, but whoever it was, I hope Mike Pence will agree that it was a deplorable thing to do.

  40. 40.

    BruceFromOhio

    @raven: Futbol? Si, no love except for Radhino and some of the commentariat. Now, handegg? That’s a different story. Go, Washington Inappropriately-Named-and-Mascotted-Team-For-Our-Nations-Capital!

  42. 42.

    Roger Moore

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Here it seems as if you aren’t religious, you are ineligible to be considered seriously as a Presidential candidate.

    I don’t know. Trump is irreligious, and he is getting plenty of consideration as a candidate.

  43. 43.

    Percysowner

    @JPL: Of course he’s not a deplorable. David Fricking Duke isn’t a deplorable according to Mike Pence. If they vote Republican nothing they do will be deplorable. I they vote Democrat, then everything they do is deplorable.

  45. 45.

    laura

    Will any quarterbacks take as unrelenting a beat down as the “responsible parties” allowed on Cam Newton by Denver.
    If yes, why?

  47. 47.

    hueyplong

    @efgoldman:
    “BTW, will anyone not related to the players watch Rams-49ers?”

    I’ll be switching between the SF 49ers and the SF Giants, though neither team currently fills me with confidence these days. It’s like voting Democratic in southern states, which I’ve done a lot.

  50. 50.

    Enzymer

    @Patricia Kayden: @Patricia Kayden: I’m the opposite,
    I can understand football (growing up in Nebraska ensured that), but soccer I don’t understand. All I see is a lot of cute humpy men running around randomly. Not that there isn’t some pleasure there…

  54. 54.

    Joyce H

    Hey, is anyone else seeing what I’m seeing on the Deplorables front? Because I’m starting to think it’s less a gaffe and more a clever strategy. Let’s look at the timeline:

    On Friday, Clinton made the Deplorables ‘gaffe’, said that half of Trump’s supporters were bigots. On Saturday, she quasi-apologized – apologized for saying ‘half’! Said, welllll, maybe it’s not that many. Sunday is the Day Of Solemn Remembrance, during which both campaigns had pledged not to campaign, and late that day, the Clinton campaign announced that Clinton was taking a couple days off the campaign to recover from pneumonia.

    Now it’s Monday, and the Trump campaign comes roaring out the gate whining about Deplorables. The news media covers what they’re saying, and then when they get to the part of the segment that’s ‘on the other hand’ (both-siderism, remember), they don’t have a Clinton quote to rebut it with, so what they’re doing is fact-checking the original gaffe! The numbers guys are digging into the opinion surveys to show that a large segment of Trump supporters hold really deplorable views, while the ‘road warriors’ are reporting from the campaign trail about the genuinely despicable things they hear at rallies that don’t come across on television, and the upshot is that the coverage is saying, “Yeah, but – she’s kinda right!”

    And it’s not the Clinton campaign making the case, it’s the news media! They’re finally starting to have ‘the conversation’ about the mainstreaming of hateful extremism by the Trump campaign that did NOT get kicked off by Clinton’s thoughtful and well-delivered speech on the alt-right a few weeks back.

    (It helps, of course, when a campaign adviser and a candidate’s son both retweet neo-nazi memes!)

    So – the Deplorables a gaffe? You tell me.

  57. 57.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Enzymer: The scoring system for football is just way too confusing to me. Soccer is simple. Kick the ball in your opponent’s net = goal.

  60. 60.

    JMG

    I played football. Got my bell rung, too (60s vernacular) in practice, was told to miss a day, which I did. That’s high school in that time. I loved playing. Loved it. Fifty years later I’m damn glad I wasn’t good enough to play past high school. But I can’t help still loving the game, even though I know it’s more danger than is acceptable.

  62. 62.

    Keith P.

    @Joyce H: It might be a scheme to make people stop watching cable news. I was stuck at dialysis with nothing on, and I swear CNN was covering nothing but “basket of deplorables” and Pneumonia-gate. And they were “breaking news” for at least 3 hours (really, longer, since this has been going on for 24+ hours now). Of course, I don’t need complex schemes to make me realize that Wolf Blitzer is boring as gray shit.

  65. 65.

    laura

    @hueyplong: hey now, the Giants pull their game together just before the season’s AND it’s an even year. So take heart, Pence and Posey will rally the Team.

  68. 68.

    jacy

    @Keith P.:

    I left MSNBC on in the bedroom when I got up this morning — every time I walked back in throughout the day (6 AM to 6 PM), it was ALWAYS the Great Hillary Health Horror! I’m a the jadedest of cynics when it comes to media coverage, and I was still a tad shocked. This is apparently the shiniest of shiny objects they’ve seen in while.

  70. 70.

    Enzymer

    @Patricia Kayden: Mmm you have a point there. Still I wish I could really understand soccer(futbol) better. Of course, better flirtation with the Latino gay population is merely a cherry on the topic of increased knowledge…..

  71. 71.

    ThresherK

    @Enzymer: Spousal ThresherK has developed an appreciation for American football teams who wear silver or gold pants. The modern basketball uniform (of the last ~20 years) has ruined the game for her.

  72. 72.

    Roger Moore

    @Patricia Kayden:

    The scoring system for football is just way too confusing to me.

    But Canadian football has an even more complicated scoring system, so you should be OK with our simplified American version. Actually, it isn’t too bad. If you tackle your opponent in his end zone, or if there’s another play that’s equivalent like a punt blocked out of the end zone, it’s a safety and worth 2 points. If you kick the ball through the uprights on a deliberate scoring attempt, that’s a field goal and worth 3 points. If you carry the ball across the goal line, or do the equivalent by catching the ball in the end zone or recovering an opponent’s fumble there, it’s a touchdown and worth 6 points.

    The confusing part is that after a touchdown, you’re allowed to try for a point after touchdown (PAT). The PAT attempt can either be a kick like a field goal (worth 1 point) or a single play to get into the end zone like a touchdown (worth 2 points).

  73. 73.

    Denali

    @Joyce H,

    I think it was an intentional parody of Trump’s Mexicans…rapists, criminals, and some are good people opening shot. Hillary figured out that any publicity is good publicity after all her policy speeches were ignored, and so she came came up with a catchy phrase….basket of deplorables… It reallly worked for her.

  74. 74.

    Kathleen

    @raven: Glad to hear you are doing well and are “out amongst them” at the Y and various and sundry other places. I’m catching up on dead threads below.

  75. 75.

    Keith P.

    @jacy: Not sure if MSNBC is any better. Two straight hours of Wolf Blitzer and Erin Burnett asking 20 different people to weigh in the same issue every day is pretty tedious, but so is trying find the point of whatever Maddow started pontificating about 20 minutes ago. I’m now binge-watching HBO shows I’ve seen a dozen times on Amazon just to get away from the tiredness. It’s gotten to the point where a statement like “we could have handled it better” is literally presented as “Breaking News”…over and over again! Ugh.

  77. 77.

    raven

    @Kathleen: Oh thanks. Yea, this was more preventative than anything else. The do dig around a good bit with the scope but it’s better than an open surgery.

  81. 81.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Roger Moore:

    Trump is irreligious, and he is getting plenty of consideration as a candidate.

    As did the irreligious George W. Bush, who came close to winning two elections.

  83. 83.

    Joel

    @lamh36: They’re the team with the fixer.

    The marshals contacted the Steelers to arrange Seigler’s arrest at the team’s training facility, Gallagher said. A team public relations staffer notified Kearney, even though the marshals had advised that staffer “not to disclose this information to anyone,” [Allegheny County Sheriff William P.] Mullen wrote to “Outside the Lines,” citing the marshals’ arrest report.

    The following morning — despite the arrangement — Seigler was nowhere to be found. Kearney gave the marshals Seigler’s address, Mullen wrote, but a daylong stakeout yielded nothing. Kearney then provided the marshals with another address in the same apartment complex and Seigler — with Kearney present — was taken into custody.

    To be fair, they have some good guys, too.

  84. 84.

    Aleta

    @Joyce H: On August 25 HRC gave a strong speech attacking Trump’s racism. Transcript. She neatly laid it out so the jerks in the press wouldn’t even have to look anything up in order to write. Almost a handout for them.

    Intentional heating up the focus on racism for sure. As for the Deplore remark, I can imagine someone throwing it out as an example of how to make the press pay more attention. Risky, but perhaps she decided to go for it, feeling relaxed with the LGBT audience and also weary.

    My guess is similar to the first part of yours: they have intended to make racism central for the last 2 months, and had to goad the press to report. Knowing the Trump campaign would go out and deny, keeping the story going. And hoping this will make voters put into serious context every (inevitable) piece of ugliness to come in the next two months from him and his supporters. Already his son retweeted a photo that has that ball rolling.

    It looks to be timed with the start of FL Michelle Obama’s tour to speak for voter registration and turn out. Go Michelle.

  88. 88.

    Steeplejack

    @Lorinda Pike:

    That’s “the Burgundy and Gold,” as all the TV news teams here in D.C. have taken to calling them. Rarely do you hear a “Redskins” leak out, and then it’s usually from a network or ESPN snippet.

  89. 89.

    Suzanne

    @efgoldman: My Facebook page suggested that I tell my friends that I’m watching the game, and I realized that Big Facebook doesn’t know me AT ALL. I’d sooner find blood in my urine than watch the Offensive Epithets.

  90. 90.

    JAFD

    @jacy:
    Q:Why, when an NHL team gets restyled uniforms, do they want to bring the Devils to town for their home opener ?

    A:So they can have a special promotion and call it New Jersey Night,

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