Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

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

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

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

White supremacy is terrorism.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

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

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

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

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

You are here: Home / Organizing & Resistance / Don't Mourn, Organize / Late Night Open Thread: Shine

Late Night Open Thread: Shine

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Unsaintly, but probably irresistable (at least to David Axelrod:

… “I’m confident that if I — if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” Mr. Obama said on Mr. Axelrod’s podcast, “The Axe Files,” referring to his message of inclusion and helping middle-class Americans.

“I know that in conversations that I’ve had with people around the country, even some people who disagreed with me, they would say the vision, the direction that you point towards is the right one,” he said…

Reader Interactions

111Comments

  2. 2.

    Corner Stone

    And if I bent over far enough bats would fly out of my ass and eat all the Ebola infected mosquitoes that seriously aren’t any problem, y’all.

  3. 3.

    Brachiator

    Plausible, but irrelevant since the system does not allow for a third term.

    I will miss Obama and his family and wish them well in the years ahead.

  4. 4.

    Gemina13

    The Apricot Hellbeast is about to go on another Twitter tantrum over this one. I love how Obama can troll the hell out of him without appearing to lift a finger.

  6. 6.

    Omnes Omnibus

    I posit that Bill could have won in 2000 as well. I don’t disagree that Obama would have won if he could have run. I would have voted for him. Fear of people like them and FDR caused the two term limit.

  7. 7.

    lamh36

    Obama is just needling Trump at this point. IMHO, there was NEVER anything PBO could personally do to stop January 20th from happening.

    But I’m betting he’ll leave little bread crumbs and secret eggs, that will either stump Trump, or box him into having to defend or agree with some action that Obama set in motion.

    Why, cause I think Obama is genuinely one of those people, who doesn’t mind not having the credit or having his name in lights, as long as the outcome is what is good for the country and what he wanted all along?

    But maybe I’m reading too much into it..

  8. 8.

    lamh36

    Anyhoo…spent some time tonight with Maddie (here we are…)

    I told Maddie bout my boyfriend Idris (we were watching Pacific Rim)
    She said “that’s your boyfriend…he’s handsome”

    I said yep, that’s my boo. Then I asked her, who looks better my boyfriend or my sister’s (she has a real live boyfriend…lol).

    She said my boyfriend ??

    I said oooh ima tell her…to which Maddie said “nooo no no” ???

  12. 12.

    James Powell

    Is he trolling Trump or is he disrespecting Clinton?

    If we want to have a pointless discussion, this one’s as good as any.

    What fake scandals would the NYT have used against Obama?

  14. 14.

    chopper

    say what you will about O, he could win an election.

    if I were him I’d be snipy too. he spent 8 years saving our asses and now all of it, his entire legacy, is going to get reversed.

  15. 15.

    Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)

    @Gemina13: They will indeed be missed. Now it’s time to look to what’s next.

    First up: NO COVER.

    No normalization.
    No compromise.
    No capitulation.
    No acknowledgement.
    No reaching out to or trying to “understand” fascists, racists, bigots, misogynists, white Supremacists, or narcissists.

    REFUSE. REJECT. RESIST.

  17. 17.

    Yarrow

    @Omnes Omnibus: Someone said in a previous thread that charisma wins. Obama, Bill Clinton, Reagan, W (especially compared to Gore). And Trump, despite being disgusting, has his own type of charisma. Maybe Hillary has it, but I don’t see charisma as her strong suit.

    In any case, perhaps what the Democrats need is someone with tons of charisma to run next time. If there are elections.

  18. 18.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Botsplainer:

    I seem to be the only person on the planet who is unable to find the Gin & Tacos Facebook feed. Is there a secret password or something? Ed’s G&T blog doesn’t have a link, and when I do a search on FB I’m not seeing the story that everyone’s talking about. Help?

  19. 19.

    Yarrow

    @Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): Yep. The Democrats are already showing signs of being too wishy-washy. If you have Dem representatives and you’re not already burning up their phone lines to tell them to hold the line, no compromise with Republicans, then get busy. Your representatives may have town halls in January. Find out and show up. Help stiffen their spines.

    If you’ve got Republican representatives, it’s also worth letting them know what you think. They hear from plenty of Republicans. Let them know you’re here.

  20. 20.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):

    No reaching out to or trying to “understand” fascists, racists, bigots, misogynists, white Supremacists, or narcissists.

    Hey, fellow white liberals, note this! You want good stuff, it goes to everyone. Deal. I can. How scared are you?

  25. 25.

    Yarrow

    @Omnes Omnibus: Two actors and a singer. Anyone not in the entertainment industry? Anyone who has ever run for office? Not that that matters in the age of Trump. I don’t think we’ll have elections anyway, so it all seems like talking about an imaginary thing anyway.

  27. 27.

    Elie

    Maybe its finally hitting him what was at stake/what was lost and what this asshole is going to do? Who knows? Pointless speculation and one I hope is his last regret in public. He is better than that but everyone gets to have their grief and disappointment for a very little while. Time to move on Barak. No saving this — it is what it is. In the end all we have is our actions and their consequences. That is it. You did a fine job — you did as best as you thought you could at any point. It will have to be enough. I will personally miss you but hope that we are not so distracted with keeping ourselves together that we can actually miss you. That said, most of all, go in peace.

  29. 29.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Yarrow: You seem to be missing the point. I mentioned several left of center people with amazing charisma. You can do with what you want with it. I an sorry that I did not do the exact analysis that would make you perfectly happy. What would you do?

  32. 32.

    Yarrow

    @Omnes Omnibus: “The” point or your point? Perhaps you are missing my point. In any case, you’re not making me happy or unhappy. I wondered if there are Democrats with charisma who aren’t entertainers.

  38. 38.

    Yarrow

    @Major Major Major Major: Yeah, I think Clooney would be great but understand why many people wouldn’t want to go through the scrutiny. Although no one really scrutinized Trump’s background, so maybe we’re in a new day? Nah. That’s for Republicans only.

    Also, too, Clooney’s wife has dual British and Lebanese citizenship, so that could be an issue were he to run for President.

  39. 39.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Omnes Omnibus: …you said Clooney didn’t want to run due to skeletons? Which could mean he thinks he’d lose due to skeletons or he doesn’t want to undergo the public humiliation or he doesn’t want the other people involved to? Maybe you have context I don’t that made what you wrote anathema to what I said but that was not apparent in your words.

    ETA: jeez, calm down. Or if you and Yarrow are going to fight stop @’ing me.

  41. 41.

    Percysowner

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Fear of people like them and FDR caused the two term limit.

    The thing is, I remember that, near the end of St. Ronnie’s second term, the Republicans actually talked about changing it back to no term limits. They admitted that Ronnie wouldn’t benefit, because he was elected under the old rules, but they thought they were going to have a permanent Republican majority, so they wanted the chance to keep their guys in forever. It’s too bad the Democrats didn’t jump on the bandwagon, because it would have helped us more than them, but we were afraid of Ronald Reagan being President forever.

  42. 42.

    BBA

    @Yarrow: Trump can’t live forever, and probably won’t be able to get rid of term limits. That means 2024 is wide open, and a newly eligible candidate is sure to be courted by both parties. I refer, of course, to Taylor Swift.

  45. 45.

    Yarrow

    @BBA: Nah. They will figure out how not to have actual elections by then. It’ll be Trump family for life or so much voter suppression that it’ll be nothing but white guy after white guy Republican, each worse than the last. Opposition leaders will be jailed or killed. That’s how authoritarians do it.

  46. 46.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Botsplainer:

    Jesus, I was just reading the Gin & Tacos Facebook feed.

    Damn, people suck.

    The one about awful parents? Yeah, that was frightening. Explains how 60 million people were ok with voting for trump.

  47. 47.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @opiejeanne:

    Exactly. I read his blog regularly, and I follow his FB feed, but apparently people are seeing a story on his FB that I haven’t seen and just can’t find. Something about his mother or stepmother or someone injuring herself because she beat him too hard when he was a kid, and it was all his fault that she hurt her hand. It sounds awful, but Ed is usually really good at drawing larger lessons or messages from small anecdotes, and I’d like to read what he wrote about this episode.

  48. 48.

    BBA

    @Yarrow: I thought the same about Bush, but it didn’t happen. I expect Trump to try it but enough of the levers belong to people who hate his guts, so he won’t get anywhere.

    That said, I can’t see the Democrats taking back Congress in my lifetime, and I’m younger than most around here.

  50. 50.

    opiejeanne

    @SiubhanDuinne: I think it’s the one that starts with the comment by the poster’s step-mom about bullying being invented recently by liberals or something. People answering with tales of their own.

  52. 52.

    Yarrow

    @BBA: We’ll see. Things move fast when authoritarians take power. Old norms have already been ignored or trampled and are basically dead. He will do what he can to consolidate power because power and money is what he wants. The other levers of power only work when the institutions are strong. Ours are not. And the Republican controlled Congress wants him to sign their bills into law so they will flatter him and go along with whatever he wants so long as they get what they want. It benefits the Republicans to have a Republican president-for-life, so I don’t see them working overtime to stop him from doing things like eliminating term limits for president if they can also figure out how to keep Democratic voters from voting so they don’t have to worry about elections anymore.

  55. 55.

    Percysowner

    Basically I’m going with I really enjoyed voting and I’m going to miss it. Basically, if Trump DOESN’T kill us all, I expect him to find a way to cancel all elections, and the Repubs will let him. I only missed one general election and 2 primaries with no issues.

  56. 56.

    Another Scott

    @Gemina13: He already did, 8 hours ago:

    Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 8h 8 hours ago

    President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me. He should say that but I say NO WAY! – jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.

    18,016 replies 14,883 retweets 57,282 likes

    “He should say that”?? Is that a Queens-ism?

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  57. 57.

    fuckwit

    Obama was our Gorbachev.

    He tried to reform a system that had rotted from the inside. And failed despite great effort.

    The republic is dead. Now the kleptocracy is unfettered.

  58. 58.

    BBA

    Come on people, it’s not like it’s Ted Cruz. Trump is a deeply stupid, lazy man who just won’t put in the effort to make himself dictator-for-life. As long as he gets to gold-plate his cock he’ll sign anything Congress puts on his desk, and Ryan knows it. (Which is frankly terrifying enough.)

    You are still crying wolf.

  59. 59.

    Hill Dweller

    @Another Scott: If Obama could have run again, Trump wouldn’t have run against him. Trump knows Obama would wipe the floor with him, which is why he didn’t run against him back in 2012, when he was far more vulnerable.

  61. 61.

    Oldgold

    Shortly after tweetimg he would have beaten Obama, the Short-Fingered Vulgarion tweeted this:

    Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump
    The world was gloomy before I won – there was no hope. Now the market is up nearly 10% and Christmas spending is over a trillion dollars!
    5:32 PM – 26 Dec 2016

    It is just effin’unbelievable! His narcisstic self-aggrandizing respects no boundaries.

  62. 62.

    Gemina13

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I found the link. I grew up with kids who had parents like that, and I still wonder if any of my childhood friends are in jail for finally snapping and killing the worthless shitheeled egg/sperm donors.

  65. 65.

    hitchhiker

    David Axelrod gives me a headache. He’s out there cashing in at CNN, running his thing at U of Chicago, and doing his podcast — every last bit of his life is predicated on what?

    Getting Obama elected. Okay, yay! Except Obama was the face of that and it was his political skills that made it possible. So Axe gets credit for seeing the potential. Okay, yay!

    But I had to stop listening to his podcast sometime in July when it became obvious that Every Single Episode had to include him asking an oh-so-mournful question about how very unlikable was the Democratic nominee. Seriously, every single episode. He bloody hates the Clintons and it’s pretty obvious that on some level he’s not one bit sorry to see DT take office.

    So, screw him and his long-held grudge b.s. His role at the Obama white house from 2009 to 2011 was to help craft the administration’s message to the public. Guess what? His utter failure to communicate effectively about the ACA helped lead to the goddamn tea party and their triumph in 2010.

    And that means he was hapless without the greatness of Barack Obama. Who depended on him to help keep the congress and the public on the side of truth and justice, and whom he let down in a catastrophic way.

    So he can shut the hell up, as far as I’m concerned.

  66. 66.

    Yarrow

    @Oldgold: This tweet cracks me up. It’s so pathetic. “The world was gloomy before I won.” It sounds like the beginning off a third-grader’s half-hearted attempt at writing a story.

  67. 67.

    Steeplejack (tablet)

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Late to the thread, but maybe you’ll see this. In an earlier thread here today somebody said that the Facebook post was taken down. What it said was that Ed’s mother told the story of breaking her hand beating him, then complaining that her husband would not take her to the hospital to get her hand taken care of. To her that was the real point of the story.

  68. 68.

    Anne Laurie

    @hitchhiker:

    But I had to stop listening to his podcast sometime in July when it became obvious that Every Single Episode had to include him asking an oh-so-mournful question about how very unlikable was the Democratic nominee. Seriously, every single episode. He bloody hates the Clintons and it’s pretty obvious that on some level he’s not one bit sorry to see DT take office.

    David Axelrod is one of those people who are forever re-writing their own Wikipedia page in their heads. “Ran the campaign of the first African-American President, a man bookended by two historically awful Republicans” sounds better to him than “Ran the campaign of the first African-American President, who was succeeded by the first female President.” He wants to have been Merlin in Camelot, not just the guy who greased the machinery while progress was made.

    President Obama is notoriously loyal to his close circle of friends. Some of those friends have returned his loyalty better than others, shall we say.

  69. 69.

    Mnemosyne

    @Yarrow:

    Trump’s not a politician. He’s an entertainer. He has never held political office before in his life. So why are we not supposed to fight fire with fire and run a better entertainer against him?

  70. 70.

    hitchhiker

    @efgoldman:

    Maybe. We don’t do cable at all, but the last time mr. hitchhiker was visiting his aging conservative dad, CNN was on the tube nonstop. Mr. H said it was far more garbage-y than he remembered from the pre-Fox days.

    I think Axe is probably poison in the sense that he lends authority without actually doing us any good.

  72. 72.

    Mnemosyne

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Given what I know about families with a narcissistic parent, I’m guessing the rest of the family pressured him into taking it down because he was airing dirty laundry or revealing family secrets or some bullshit like that.

    If your family’s secret is that the parents were beating the toddlers hard enough to break the parent’s hand, that is not a secret that should be kept.

  74. 74.

    Mnemosyne

    @opiejeanne:

    Random answer for you from the thread below: when the area codes split, Glendale was able to convince the state that they’re part of the San Fernando Valley and not the San Gabriel Valley, so they got to stay 818 instead of having to go to 626 like Pasadena and points east did.

  75. 75.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Yarrow:

    This tweet cracks me up. It’s so pathetic. “The world was gloomy before I won.” It sounds like the beginning off a third-grader’s half-hearted attempt at writing a story.

    It’s actually a really great first line for a story. I’d read the next sentence, wouldn’t you?

  78. 78.

    Aleta

    Neuroecologist Yossi Yovel and his colleagues recorded a group of 22 Egyptian fruit bats, Rousettus aegyptiacus, for 75 days. Using a modified machine learning algorithm originally designed for recognizing human voices, they fed 15,000 calls into the software. They then analyzed the corresponding video to see if they could match the calls to certain activities.

    They found that the bat noises are not just random, as previously thought, reports Skibba. They were able to classify 60 percent of the calls into four categories. One of the call types indicates the bats are arguing about food. Another indicates a dispute about their positions within the sleeping cluster. A third call is reserved for males making unwanted mating advances and the fourth happens when a bat argues with another bat sitting too close. In fact, the bats make slightly different versions of the calls when speaking to different individuals within the group, similar to a human using a different tone of voice when talking to different people. Skibba points out that besides humans, only dolphins and a handful of other species are known to address individuals rather than making broad communication sounds.

  82. 82.

    opiejeanne

    @Major Major Major Major: What a great line. I still haven’t read your story, drat. I will have to do so now, since I am drowning myself in reading, escaping into books like I did when I was a kid and interacting with the world was unpleasant.

  85. 85.

    opiejeanne

    @Major Major Major Major: Ok, I see that you made it private back in July, when I was hip-deep in a wedding, then recovery from the wedding, then running away on a vacation because the wedding of the youngest child was in my garden and we were quite frankly tired of working on the garden.
    And by then I had sort of forgotten about your book project (sorry).
    Anyway, that is a great opening.

  91. 91.

    Steeplejack (tablet)

    @Mnemosyne:

    I took it as a parody and thought it was funny. What got it to bordering on hilarious was the possibility that some people would take it as “real,” or that it was made as “real.” In that case, the mind boggles.

    ETA: Especially loved the Roddy Piper They Live sunglasses shot.

  103. 103.

    EBT

    @Jay Noble: Are you sure you mean AD&D because none of the versions used a 10 point scale for stats. Nor did the core rule books mention Hitler. They did say all Gypsies are thieves thought!

  104. 104.

    Zinsky

    I kind of wish Obama hadn’t said that, although it probably is true. To be clear, Hillary Clinton “defeated” the orange-haired shitgibbon, but only because of the vagaries and peculiarities of the American electoral system, we will be inaugurating the worst human being to ever hold the office of president in January.

  105. 105.

    Applejinx

    @fuckwit:

    Obama was our Gorbachev.
    He tried to reform a system that had rotted from the inside. And failed despite great effort.
    The republic is dead. Now the kleptocracy is unfettered.

    I agree with this completely. It’s also why Bernie could not possibly have done any good as President and why my (early) primary vote for him was an issues/protest vote, not in the belief he’d have won or could have helped in office.

    I don’t know how hard Obama could have tried and may never know everything he did in office, but he did try to reform a system where both wings had rotted right off. All the Republicans lost to Trump. Then, the Democrats blew what should have been the most absurdly easy, overwhelming set-up of a win: some of us were wondering if the whole thing was a stunt, and who’s to say the rotten Democrats didn’t contrive to have Trump carrying the banner for the Republicans, straight off the cliff?

    The ‘Dear GOD, not any of you bastards’ vote won. It should never have been a close thing in a sane political system. The whole thing was already ruined.

    I can’t cry too hard about that. It would have been ruined whoever won. This way is less disillusioning, and Trump gets to tie our doom to the Republicans, and they can and will be brazen and open about starving and trampling us all.

    I think people who are distraught are people who think Hillary would have been any better. I think if she had good in her (and we’ll never know now) she’d have been about as effective as Bernie in doing it. The rightward swing turned into the pendulum flying rightwards off the clock. What can she do but chase it? She was already trying to court Republican voters in order to get a House-winning landslide.

  107. 107.

    Mickee

    @lamh36: I agree. He is trolling Trump and, predictably, 1.) Trump took the bait, and 2.) The MSM is all over the ‘conflict’ between Trump and Obama rather than addressing the content of Obama’s claim.

  108. 108.

    Betty

    Just saw Kelly Anne’s warning that people who criticize Trump better be careful. What country is this now?

  109. 109.

    LAC

    @efgoldman: I read the transcript of the interview and it was not harsh to Clinton. There was context to the comment, but of course, WAPO cannot be bothered to write it. But of course, he would have beaten Trump. Trump knew it in 2012 and that is why he didn’t run.

  110. 110.

    Debbie1

    @Yarrow: I know Clooney’s wife is foreign, but you forget that the Orange One’s wife is from a Slavic country and sounds like she would be right at home in a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon, trying to kill Moose and Squirrel.

  111. 111.

    VFX Lurker

    @Applejinx:

    It would have been ruined whoever won.

    Women, children, minorities, LGBT folks, sick people, poor people, immigrants and Muslims will suffer more under Trump than they would have under Hillary.

    I think if she had good in her (and we’ll never know now)

    Wow. I’m not sure how to approach this level of ignorance in the age of Google. Her track record on children’s issues alone should speak for itself.

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