Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I really should read my own blog.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

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

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

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

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

The willow is too close to the house.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

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

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

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

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

You are here: Home / Elections / Biden-Harris 2020 / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Durga Puja

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Durga Puja

by | 137 Comments

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“May these nine days and nine nights bring you and your family good health and fortune. Wishing you a very Happy Durga Puja.”

“May Goddess Durga bestow her nine forms of blessings on you and your family: Fame, Wealth, Prosperity, Name, Happiness, Education, Health, Power, and Commitment. Happy Durga Puja.”

Wikipedia tells me that “the festival epitomises the victory of good over evil, though it is also in part a harvest festival celebrating the goddess as the motherly power behind all of life and creation.” Politics aside, I am very much in favor of both harvest festivals, and the triumph of goodness.

Reader Interactions

137Comments

  2. 2.

    debbie

    “Just by virtual [virtue] of one single election, things don’t become perfect. But you get yourself on a pattern, on a habit, of being better represented and getting better served by your government.” – @BarackObama

    Just by virtue of one single election, we either hold on to or lose the dream that America represents.

  4. 4.

    different-church-lady

    If my watch is correct, it’s been nearly eleven hours since Rudy Giuliani has done something unbelievable.

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    Been a while since I shared a nugget cadged from that hefty volume of curiosities published in England in 1811.

    Turns out reading isn’t so fundamental after all.

    ;)

    Oh, one other thing. For those who watch stuff on Hulu, they’re ba-a-a-ack.

  10. 10.

    Betty Cracker

    Two armed men dressed as security guards set up a tent outside an early voting location in downtown St. Pete yesterday. When questioned by the cops, they said they were licensed security guards hired by the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign denies it.

    Both the supervisor of elections and the sheriff in that county are Republicans who are running for reelection. They claim they will not allow armed people to intimidate voters. To their credit, they did run the “security guards” off. It’s not clear if they took names and plan to investigate now that the Trump campaign says they did not hire them.

  15. 15.

    geg6

    @NotMax:

    Lovely story. Thanks, I needed that.

    I also needed my state’s AG on Morning Joe. He is awesome. Took on the Catholic Church and crushed them. Took on UPMC’s move to monopolize health insurance in my region, and eventually the entire state, and beat the hell out of them. Has taken on every challenge to our election and process by Mango Mussolini and his minions in the state leg and won resoundingly every time. So happy and proud to have voted to re-elect him. Josh Shapiro is a superstar.

  16. 16.

    MagdaInBlack

    Pouring here in Chicagoland. I see all the usual underpasses are flooded.
    I LOVED Obama with NFLTG .

  19. 19.

    Betty Cracker

    @debbie: Yeah, the incident was covered by other local media outlets, but I didn’t see any photos. The sheriff’s office is supposed to provide an update this morning. According to the SoE, the sheriff confirmed the men were licensed guards from a real security company. So, if the Trump campaign spokesperson lied when she said they didn’t hire them, the company should have the receipts.

  21. 21.

    Kay

    The Trump justices blocking curbside voting almost certainly violates the ADA. All the voters who are affected by this should demand the ADA protections, which in Ohio means two pollworkers, a Republican and a Democrat, have to go out to their vehicle with a ballot and a clipboard.

  22. 22.

    David ?Booooooo!? Koch

    Obummer’s speech was a big disappointment. Not once did he mention oligarchs or Scandinavia.

  24. 24.

    Betty Cracker

    According to our small town rag, a number of Democrats in our county received the “vote for Trump or we’ll come after you” email allegedly from the Proud Boys, which Trump’s DNI toady says is really from Iran. Neither my husband nor I received the threat, so we feel kinda left out…

  28. 28.

    Spanky

    @Betty Cracker: 
    Dear Betty Cracker,
    It has come to our attention that you’re a dirty pinko Democrat, so you’d better vote for the orange shitbag or else!

    Signed,
    Not at all proud bois

  29. 29.

    Chyron HR

    @debbie:

    Just by virtue of one single election, we either hold on to or lose the dream that America represents.

    Yes, but if you try to tell progressives that then they just respond, “GIVe mE a rEAsON to VOTe wiThOUt MentIONInG ThE FOUrtH rEIch.”

  34. 34.

    different-church-lady

    @NotMax:  Wow — I know trailers are filled with the best moments, but if that’s any indication they’re even sharper than they were in the 90s.

  37. 37.

    Immanentize

    Can someone please explain??

    So emails were actually sent to Democrats threatening them and their families if they did not vote for Trump — check

    These emails were signed “Proud Boys” — check

    So this was a somehow an anti-Trump effort?

    Cooked up in Iran?

    Help! I’m melting!!!!

  41. 41.

    Gin & Tonic

    @debbie: According to something I read yesterday and am too uninterested to research today, the Proud Boys lost control of their domain name somehow. So no, they do not seem competent to manage their own mailings.

  42. 42.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Chyron HR: Have the dirtbag left called Biden a corporate whore yet who won’t give them free college, free healthcare, and a unicorn butler that shits rainbows out of its eyes?

  43. 43.

    John S.

    @Baud: Voter participation is already through the roof, and likely to be the highest in more than 100 years.

    I have to believe people are not crawling through broken glass in the middle of a pandemic and driving record turnout to vote for a shitstain who barely squeaked by the first time around.

  44. 44.

    Immanentize

    @sanjeevs: Roger Stone was friends with the Proud Boys.  Proud Boys are notorious dummy thugs.  One of the top Proud Boys who was recently arrested has allegedly been singing to the Feds.

    Occam’s razor and my magic eight ball do not point to Iran.

  53. 53.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Baud: The gays took over the Twitter hashtag #ProudBoys. I’m talking about the domain name, like presumably proudboys.com. No, I’m not going to try going there, and I’m not going to spend any more time on this.

  57. 57.

    raven

    @Immanentize: Talk talk talk, why don’t you go home to your wife? I’ll tell you what, I’ll go home to your wife and outside of the improvement she’ll never know the difference!

  58. 58.

    Aleta

    Reporters should publish the name of the security company.  I wish the story had been that two people (named) had been arrested for setting up a tent and carrying guns outside a St. Pete polling location, if they were inside the boundary of illegal activity.

    I wonder what the the security company charges for such a job, and how they categorize it.  I  mean, they’re not protecting a person or a private business.  And what pay scale did the hired boots settle for?  (I bet it wasn’t even nightclub bouncer level.)  Does their contract  have a clause ensuring they’ll still be paid if chased off or arrested?  Somehow I doubt it.

  59. 59.

    raven

    @raven: ”

    Murder, Inc. was filmed in and around New York City, and the cast consisted largely of actors from the off-Broadway theater. Peter Falk recalled in his autobiography Just One More Thing that the film was “no big deal for Twentieth Century Fox. They hired second-tier stars, nobody had ever heard of them. The cast of off-Broadway stage actors, including me, came cheap. A few dollars a week and a bag of peanuts.” [4]

  61. 61.

    Butter Emails

    Given recent Supreme Court rulings on voting, I think Congress would be fully justified passing the following if unable to right size the Supreme Court.

    The Supreme Court Integrity and Transparency Act

    1. All decisions and stays must be written personally and in their entirety by one or more Supreme Court Justices. The decisions and stays must be hand written on vellum using a quill pen and ink
    2. Following the completion of the document, a date will be set for an official reading of the document on the Mall. The reading must be broadly publicized for at least two weeks prior to the reading to allow for informing and travel of interested parties
    3. The official reading must be done by the primary author with concurring Justices flanking. In the event that the primary author is unable to speak, a surrogate may be chosen from among the concurring Justices.
    4. The official reading must be available to and in the presence of and proximity to the general public such that the public is able to provide immediate feedback.
    5. Dissenting Justices must be permitted to appear and read their dissents, but are not required to do so
    6. Following the reading, all concurring justices must remain for 6 hours and receive public feedback
    7. The decision writer must then successfully fight to the death, bare-handed an animal selected by the dissenting justices. In the event no dissents, this requirement is waved
    8. Until such a time as all the above conditions are met, the decision does not go into effect
  64. 64.

    Raoul Paste

    George Will says this about Trump. “he is about to have an encounter with a surly electorate wielding a truncheon“

    Make it so

  65. 65.

    Bruce K

    Meanwhile in Greece, the local flavor of neo-Nazis, Golden Dawn, got the hammer dropped on them by the criminal courts at their sentencing hearing. Thirteen years apiece for the party leader and a number of former GD parliamentarians for running a criminal organization, plus life in prison for the GD member who knifed antifa rapper Pavlos Fyssas to death.

    That’s how Nazis get handled in the civilized world.

    (In less good news, COVID is spiking badly here. New cases shot up from 400 to 600 to 800 in the space of three days. Curfews and regional lockdowns are being put into place.)

  68. 68.

    TS (the original)

    @Immanentize:

    Occam’s razor and my magic eight ball do not point to Iran.

    Given what trump has done to Iran, there is surely no way they would want him re-elected, let alone help him along the way.

  73. 73.

    germy

    @Betty Cracker:

    But will a task force that includes conservative republicans agree that the court should be expanded

    It is a good answer to give to 60 Minutes before the election.  It’s an excellent answer.

    After the task force assembles, though, I don’t expect an expanded court.  Unless Biden and/or Harris steps in to make the final decision. Every democrat on that committee will say yes and every republican will say no.

  74. 74.

    Jeffro

    @mali muso:  It’s funny, I was thinking of watching it all over again later today.

    That, and the video of Biden receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

    12 days, peeps!

  77. 77.

    Bruuuuce

    It’s good to see Mel Brooks on the right side of the History of the World, though it’s not at all surprising.

    And wow, could he play Miracle Max, looking how he does now, or what?

  78. 78.

    germy

    @hueyplong:

    Kalmar/Ruby wrote some great songs.  My favorite was “Everyone Says I Love You.”

    “Three Little Words” was their best.  It became a jazz standard.  I also think “Nevertheless, I’m in love with you” was a masterpiece.

    I never saw the biopic about them.  I assume it was largely fictional, as most biopics are.

  79. 79.

    Jeffro

    @Baud: I think it’s a smart move on Biden’s part.  Kick the can past the election, have the commission recommend the obvious (greatly expand the federal courts; review the appointments of judges who were rated ‘unfit’ or whatever and/or who had never tried a case as a lawyer; add 2 justices minimum to SCOTUS), and move on.

    Repubs will howl but they always howl, so who cares?

  80. 80.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @NotMax:

    “If your eye falls on a bargain, pick it up.” — Leonard Q. Ross (Leo Rosten), The Education of H*Y*M*A*N   K*A*P*L*A*N

  81. 81.

    Bruuuuce

    There’s a series of ads running on NYC newsradio. Essentially all the same, they target state Senators who voted to repeal cash bail, with threatening music and the same statistics: “police say that 3000 released prisoners committed over 9000 crimes after the repeal.” They also talk up the fear about defunding the police and how neighborhoods will be unsafe (at least two of these ads are for state Senators from suburban areas). At first I tuned them out, but then I listened to the small print at the end, and lo and behold, they’re being run by the Police Benevolent Association and some similar groups, and “were not solicited and not requested by any candidate or party.”

    In Michigan, the Association of Police Chiefs is saying that they cannot and will not enforce the ban on firearms at polling places “because it’s not a law.”

    Definitely time to disband the police unions. And maybe some firings for cause (i.e., failure to do their jobs) is in order for some chiefs.

  83. 83.

    NotMax

    @germy

    The film is kind of sappy and slapdash. Red Skelton is not allowed to be Red Skelton and Fred Astaire is restrained form being Fred Astaire.

  84. 84.

    Citizen Scientist

    Good morning everyone. Hoping the low-level anxiety I’ve been feeling lately is diminished once I turn in my mail-in ballot today.

    Short, but possibly humorous anecdote: For months, friends, family members, casual acquaintances have been telling me that my dad is the spitting image of Dr. Fauci. I really didn’t see it until a few weeks ago, I walked into one of our local pizza places with my dad to pick up an order, and the guy at the counter yells out “Hey Dr. Fauci!”. I laughed mainly because I finally saw that with a mask on, Dad does look very much like the man himself, similar build, hair, eyes, etc. The main difference would be that my father’s NE Ohio accent is in no way similar to Dr. Fauci’s NYer drawl (that and my dad has a Ph D in entomology, not anything regarding medicine). Later that week, I saw a still photo from that interaction between Dr. F and Rand Paul during his Senate testimony, and it made me finally admit that, yes, dad really does look like Fauci.

    Have a great day everyone. 12 more days to hang in there.

  85. 85.

    Immanentize

    @Geminid: I would buy one.  You can design your own 8balls on etsy.  I was thinking I would get one for my son where every answer is some version of “no” and “don’t try it”

  92. 92.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Bruuuuce: Billy Crystal jokes that he could play Miracle Max now without makeup.

    Which bugs the heck out of me, as I remember Billy Crystal as the young kid on “Soap” and in his early comedy career.

    It’s like going to reunion and wondering how all your friends got old.

  93. 93.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    So during Trump’s 60 Minutes interview, Kayleigh McEnany showed Stahl a huge thick book that supposedly lists everything Trump has done on health care. Stahl opened it, and all the pages are blank.

    That seems like a huge self-own to me, but I don’t speak Republican.

  96. 96.

    Jean

    In polls from Oct 17-20, both Quinnipiac and Fox show Biden well ahead in early votes in battleground states, but Trump ahead in votes to be cast on election day. I dunno. So positive news, I guess, is winning for Trump depends on votes NOT yet cast. Those count? Texas tied. Florida within the margin of error.

  99. 99.

    Bruuuuce

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I saw him on the reunion, and he doesn’t quite have the Ancient Guy thing going like Mel (long may he wave!).

    I wouldn’t wonder about my friends having aged. If they’re anything like what I see in the mirror, there’s no doubt about it.

  100. 100.

    Aleta

    @Immanentize:

    1.  Everything is an anti-T effort.

    2.  Both sides.

    3.  Trump is protecting all Americans.

    4.  Even the scientists and generals don’t understand.

    5.  Election results are under audit.  He will release them them when Hunter releases  his deleted emails.

    6.  To prevent panic.

  102. 102.

    MomSense

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: 
    Isn’t this the fifth or sixth time he has pulled that same gag? There was the table stacked with folders full of blank paper proving he divested from his companies. Then there was the tape cutting ceremony with giant piles of blank paper showing all the regulations he got rid of.

  105. 105.

    narya

    @mrmoshpotato: I am not completely opposed to running in the rain–it can actually be quite pleasant–but a complete downpour, with the occasional lightning, and massive puddles along the route . . . not so much. I am old and very slow. It was a good excuse to do the other workout too; I need to build an alternative to running, because I especially do not run on ice. I don’t mind cold, but ice is a strict no.

  108. 108.

    germy

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: It’s like going to reunion and wondering how all your friends got old.

    In the mid 1960s I’d watch TV variety shows with my parents.  And they were always saying “He got so old!”  “Look how old she is!”  because the variety shows always featured entertainers from the 1930s and ’40s.  It was my first time seeing these entertainers, so it didn’t mean anything to me.

    But now I say it all the time!  And some entertainers, I don’t even recognize.  Like when I saw an elderly Orson Bean in a movie, I had no idea who it was.  Charles Grodin was another one.

  109. 109.

    Emma from FL

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I wish I could be surprised by such a level of stupid arrogance. Trying to play a woman with more than 30 years of experience kicking powerful politicians in the ass with the equivalent of a preschooler’s stunt?

    Even if it weren’t true, it’s so typical of this WH that it’s instantly believable.

  112. 112.

    artem1s

    “Just by virtual of one single election, things don’t become perfect. But you get yourself on a pattern, on a habit, of being better represented and getting better served by your government.”

    I really hope he doesn’t disappear again after this election.  we need him out there saying this over and over again for every mid-term and state and local election all over the country. If young people want to effect real change they have to show up for every election, not just the ones where their is some messiah running and promising to fix everything with the wave of their hands.
    this is why I oppose term limits. if you have a good representative in office you should get to vote for them again, as a pattern, on a habit, to be better represented and be served by someone experienced in government service. the GOP likes term limits because its another way to suppress votes. another way to exploit cynicism and suspicion of government, of us – we the people. another way to vilify competence and glorify ignorance. everyone should get to be proud of voting for the boring, steady, non-charismatic candidate who just gets shit done. enough with mixing politics with Survivor. it’s hard enough to get competent people to run and get them into office. let’s stop shooting ourselves in the foot by accepting the TeaParty premise that you can’t trust someone who has been doing the job for the last 2 or 4 or 6 years.  that government is evil.

    he was pretty gentle with those guys at the townhall in the next video. he didn’t tell them the price of voting for legislation that they care about, that might help their communities, voting for ACA, might be losing their seat and not being to able to represent their constituents ever again. that they could end up like the Carters, the Clintons, the Obamas, etc-universally reviled by the media and everyone watching Fox News for being smart, competent, and good at governing and getting things done.

    Job one for a packed court isn’t protecting ACA or Roe or Obergfeld or even entitlements. It should be overturning Citizen’s United.

  114. 114.

    mrmoshpotato

    @artem1s:

    I really hope he doesn’t disappear again after this election. 

    Happy mid-terms everyone.  Time to crush more Russthuglican Kremlin trash.  Remember these bastards tried to take away your health insurance, and they hump lizard people.

  115. 115.

    mad citizen

    @John S.: “Voter participation is already through the roof, and likely to be the highest in more than 100 years.

    I have to believe people are not crawling through broken glass in the middle of a pandemic and driving record turnout to vote for a shitstain who barely squeaked by the first time around”

    Yup! ElectProject starting the morning showing 44 million early votes. One of the words that has been in my brain these last few months is repudiate. Thought it would have made a good sign over the shitstain’s visage.

    Or a funnier way as the orange sticker on my car says “Flush the Turd on November 3rd” (In the end I couldn’t buy anything with his visage on it, even in cartoon poo form).

  116. 116.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Immanentize:

    You can design your own 8balls on etsy.

    First time I read this sentence I totally missed the numeral 8, and was wide-eyed with admiration for American ingenuity.

  118. 118.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Immanentize: It is a sweet and gratifying moment when one’s young adult children genuinely solicit their aged parent’s advice and opinions. My sons do that from time to time and it makes me very happy that they care.

  119. 119.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    So during Trump’s 60 Minutes interview, Kayleigh McEnany showed Stahl a huge thick book that supposedly lists everything Trump has done on health care. Stahl opened it, and all the pages are blank.

    No lie? That is … astonishing.

  124. 124.

    WereBear

    @Jeffro:

    Repubs will howl but they always howl, so who cares?

     
    That, above all, must sink in. We have abundant evidence that their howling is a tactic, not a good-faith effort.

  126. 126.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @germy:  Yeah. And Mel Brooks, who started this conversation at #77. A couple years back, I watched an episode of Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee where Seinfeld goes and hangs out with Brooks and Carl Reiner as they watch TV (how cool is that?). It wasn’t Miracle Max I was thinking of watching Brooks, it was Yoda. Or Yogurt, the Spaceballs version of Yoda.

    The other shocker is finding out how old some stars are when I look them up, after seeing them and thinking they don’t look that old (to me anyway). We’ve fallen in love with The Kominsky Method on Netflix. Michael Douglas is 76, and Alan Arkin is 86! A few years ago there was a movie with Dustin Hoffman as the director of a boys choir who is past retirement age but doesn’t want to retire. I was thinking, “he’s too young to make that plausible”. Turned out he was around 80.

  127. 127.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Gin & Tonic: I’m talking about the domain name, like presumably proudboys.com. No, I’m not going to try going there, and I’m not going to spend any more time on this.

    GoDaddy says you can have the domain for $25K. So it does looks like somebody grabbed it. But there’s no content to speak of (I peeked in a private browser window). If the Proud Boys can scrape up $25K from their beer money they can get it back.

  129. 129.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @germy: Did you ever look up actors in a 1930s movie on IMDB? If they were playing a 50-60ish person in the 1930s, they were born in the 19th century. Frank Morgan for instance, born 1890. That kind of blows my mind, thinking “we’re watching a person who predates radio or the telephone.”

    Sometimes I wonder if it was weird for actors like that to see and adapt to the new media, but then I think no weirder than for us pre-cell phone, pre-microwave folks to have adopted those technologies.

    Edit: LOL. I type Frank Morgan into Google to get his dates, and in the sidebar it tells me this “American character actor” wrote these books: Real Analysis, Riemannian Geometry: A Beginner’s Guide, Geometric Measure Theory: A Beginner’s Guide

    Pretty sure that’s not the same guy.

  130. 130.

    germy

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    Yes, and some of the elderly actors we’d see in the 1930s had been doing theater in the 19th century.

    Groucho Marx was born in 1890. Robert Benchley in 1889. So they didn’t really remember that century, but the oldsters of their day certainly did

    EDIT:

    And when I see TV shows from the late 1950s-early 1960s (like Perry Mason), whenever a guest star is an elderly dowager, it always turns out they were pretty young stars of the silent screen or the Broadway stage.

  131. 131.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @germy: My favorite surprise like that (slightly later era): Mae Questal, the dotty Aunt Bethany in Christmas Vacation, was the voice of Olive Oyl and Betty Boop. And played Betty Boop in some live films as well. As I recall she turned out to have had a pretty amazing voiceover career.

  134. 134.

    cain

    @Aleta: 
    If Trump is protecting all Americans – what is this about then:

    The White House is considering slashing millions of dollars for coronavirus relief, HIV treatment, screenings for newborns and other programs in Democratic-led cities that President Donald Trump has deemed “anarchist jurisdictions,” according to Politico https://t.co/nvQZj7tSkr— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) October 21, 2020

  136. 136.

    J R in WV

    @cain: 

    If Trump is protecting all Americans – what is this about then:

    The White House is considering slashing millions of dollars for coronavirus relief, HIV treatment, screenings for newborns and other programs in Democratic-led cities that President Donald Trump has deemed “anarchist jurisdictions,” according to Politico https://t.co/nvQZj7tSkr— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) October 21, 2020

    This is a repeat of the original Trumpian strategy to cope with the Novel Coronavirus plague. Which was:

    If this plague is going to kill Democrats in Blue states, we should let it run wild, with no action by the federal government to hinder the virus!

    And now here we are, the whole nation struck down by the Trump Plague.

  137. 137.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Geminid: No, but you could probably make a bazillion hawking a Tragic Hate-Ball on Faux, Stinklair and the Original American Nazi Network…

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