Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“But what about the lurkers?”

It’s not hopeless, and we’re not helpless.

He really is that stupid.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

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

An almost top 10,000 blog!

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

No Justins, No Peace

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

So many bastards, so little time.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

People are weird.

Republicans don’t trust women.

It’s a new day. Light all those Biden polls of young people on fire and throw away the ashes.

Come on, man.

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

In after Baud. Damn.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Saturday Night Horrors Open Thread: The Contender

Saturday Night Horrors Open Thread: The Contender

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107Comments

  1. 1.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    Wow, he looks terrible in this picture. Good.

    ETA: I love the Keven Young comment.

  2. 2.

    piratedan

    so much of getting the message out is to truth gallop those peeps that keep spouting their Fox and Facebook talking points.  It requires politely refuting their propaganda, sometimes showing receipts and often-times just making them uncomfortable that their bullshit doesn’t fly here.  They need to understand that THEY are not in the majority.

  4. 4.

    sab

    Dana Houle,

    You go.

    I am old and tired and thus lacking energy. I vote every time, but, quite frankly, others younger than me need to care about the future. When I was young I did care, but the next generation only cared about themselves ( talking about you, gen X)  so everything got fucked up. Worked against it for years, but I am old and retired and it is not my problem because I will be dead when climate change really kicks in and I have stepkids but no actual progeny kids, so not my kids, not my problem.

  5. 5.

    Chetan Murthy

    @FelonyGovt: There’s a pic of TFG at the Mar-a-Lago breakfast station, in sweats and a MAGA hat.  He …. isn’t wearing makeup or his girdle, and while he doesn’t look as sickly as in this shot, he sure AF was unrecognizable to me!  So I completely believe that that’s a real pic, no photoshopping.  All those wise-head journos who declaim on his robustness, his manifest fitness, etc, are all getting fooled by makeup, hairspray, and a girdle.

  10. 10.

    Ruckus

    @Chetan Murthy:

    SFB does more to attempt to look human than almost any other sack of shit on this planet. Of course he fails 100% of the time, to me he never looks alive, well or even human – he does resemble a sack of shit though. A large, lumpy, useless, overfull sack of shit.

  12. 12.

    eclare

    @sab:

    Ahem…Gen X only cared about themselves?  Generalize much?

    Older Gen Xer here.  My first presidential election was in 1988, some older people elected Reagan, not us.

  14. 14.

    lowtechcyclist

    @SarahLongwell25: “One of the main tactics of autocrats is to exhaust people…You break through by not getting exhausted.

    To quote Arlo Guthrie: “I’m not proud. Or tired.”

  16. 16.

    sab

    @eclare: You have a point. I was born 1954, first voted ’72.  Things went nuts with Reagan, but a lot of his voters were decent people, just wrong

    My baby sister, different generation, still votes her ethics. We often coincide.

  17. 17.

    Ruckus

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I’m only 3 yrs younger than SFB but compared to me he looks at least 30, possibly 40 yrs older, and not in any way or anything like actually living health. I’ve seen corpses that look a hell of a lot healthier than he does. And I’ve never seen a corpse that looks close to that bad…..

  19. 19.

    eclare

    @sab:

    So your cohort were decent, just wrong, but my cohort only cared about themselves and fucked everything up.  Got it.

  20. 20.

    SpaceUnit

    @eclare:

    Yup.  Boomers staggered from their dipshit hippie salad days to their MAGA base dead end, trampling everything into muck as they went.  They’ve got no business blaming anyone else for the wreckage they caused.

    ETA:  I mean, if we’re going to generalize.

  21. 21.

    Tony Jay

      Area Man (76) escapes from Umpa-Lumpa themed cult.

    “It was horrible,” he says “Not the sex-rituals or the fascism, but all the incessant singing…”

    The Roald Dahl estate was approached for comment but remained too far away to hear us properly.

  22. 22.

    gene108

    I want most of those 1,000 surrogates to be former Trump officials or Trump Org employees.

    There are two to three dozen who’ve publicly stated they won’t endorse him, with varying degrees of denunciation.

  23. 23.

    AlaskaReader

    A whole lot of old people are intractable assholes whose past professional actions and current electoral actions have almost certainly brought about the literal demise of mankind as a whole. 

  25. 25.

    sab

    @Ruckus: And he doesn’t even drink. He is just nuts with a rapidly declining dementia. A twofer.

    My dad, who I deeply respect, has a slow dementia. It diminishes him because he does not have the brain he used to have. Ignoring it does not mean it goes away.

    Watching him decline is very painful, but he underneath is still him, but diminished.

    I do not think the Trump kids have that comfort ( he is still the same decent guy)  nor would they recognize it. Neither he nor they are decent people. The concept of decency would elude them. Wouldn’t even register.

  26. 26.

    Tehanu

    First:  I’m really surprised Dump appeared in public looking like that. Maybe his dementia has reached the point where he actually thinks he looks good.

    Second: I’m a Boomer and I don’t go around blaming my parents’ generation or my kids’ generation or their kids’ generation for everything that’s wrong in the world. AFAIC that’s exactly the same kind of thinking as “everything that’s wrong in the world is the fault of” minorities/uppity women/immigrants/Harvard grads/… — in short, masses of people described by their ethnicity or their gender or whatfuckingever. If I wanted to think like that, I’d be a Republican and I wouldn’t be coming here.  So fuck off with that crap. @SpaceUnit:

  29. 29.

    sab

    @eclare: Generalisations are wrong. Just a boomer reacting to attacks on us. We all screwed up, you guys as much as us guys.

  31. 31.

    SpaceUnit

    @eclare:

    I’m not very keen on generation theory.  Every once in a while a demographic comes onto the scene that’s worth noting (and boomers were certainly worth a footnote in the history books), but mostly it’s just a bunch of woo.  It’s just another way of dividing people.

  32. 32.

    eclare

    @sab:

    Where was the attack on boomers that caused you to blame my generation for fucking everything up?  You brought that out of nowhere with no provocation.  That kind of rationalization, generalization, whatever, is dangerous.  I am glad all you do now is vote, you talking to potential voters in my generation or younger would be bad.

  33. 33.

    eclare

    @SpaceUnit:

    Yep.  But some people dig into their beliefs.  Agreed that boomers have some special characteristics, add to that the fact that the numbers were huge, they were going to have an impact.

  35. 35.

    SpaceUnit

    @eclare:

    I think we’re in agreement.  Boomers were very notable in their numbers and the influence they’ve had on our society and culture.  That influence wasn’t overwhelmingly positive.  It was all over the map, really.

    But I’m not so sure it makes sense to keep bracketing people born in their wake into generations X, Y, and Z.  It’s become just a lot of bullshit.

  38. 38.

    opiejeanne

    @Tehanu: Applause.

    The first time my youngest kid made noises about how awful boomers are I shut that right down. Piegeon-holing like this turns people into things, dehumanizes them, so you don’t have to think of them as people, you don’t even have to think.

    For instance, see what happened in Rwanda when the Hutu decided to do something about the Tutsi.

  40. 40.

    AlaskaReader

    “There was never any more inception than there is now,

    Nor any more youth or age than there is now,

    And will never be any more perfection than there is now,

    Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.”

  41. 41.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Ruckus:

    I’m only 3 yrs younger than SFB but compared to me he looks at least 30, possibly 40 yrs older, and not in any way or anything like actually living health. 

    Well, when you stuff your disgusting, orange, fascist face with burnt steak and McTrashass’s “food”…

  42. 42.

    Quadrillipede

    @sab: I’m a Gen X myself. I’ve spent a few decades keeping tabs on some of my contemporaries. In my experience a plurality started off good and ate still good, a large minory went rotten, a small minority were rotten the whole time, and a few started off bad, but somehow were able to fix themselves. We’re a bit of a mixed bag as a generation. Now I really should put my phone away for the night…

  48. 48.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Quadrillipede: My understanding is that Gen X is defined as birthdates 1965-1980.  So 45-60yo today.  Looking at 2020 voting patterns ( https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-2020 ) it would appear that Gen X and Boomers broke for TFG, where Millenials and younger broke for Biden.  That’s mostly what I mean by feeling that Gen X failed.  I also feel that we imbibed far too much of the materialist go-go 80s, and that continued into the 90s.  But really, all of that is complex and debatable.

    What’s not debatable, is that my generation voted for TFG overall.

  51. 51.

    Ramalama

    @Ksmiami: yes plus the smoking of our elders while traveling in cars running on lead. The ashtrays for god’s sake in the door handles.

  53. 53.

    stacib

    @NotMax: That was Ronnie’s Steakhouse here in Chicago.  The meal looked exactly like your linked pic. :-)  My mother would take the four of us there to “teach” us how to eat in public.  (OMG, I haven’t had that memory in a long time)

  55. 55.

    NotMax

    @stacib

    (OMG, I haven’t had that memory in a long time)

    As the old cooking oil ads put it, “It all comes back except for one spoonful.”
    :)

  56. 56.

    bjacques

    Anyone blaming previous generations for fucking things up is just waiting their turn to fuck things up in their own way. Boomers spent plenty of oxygen blaming the Silent Generation

  59. 59.

    Ramalama

    @Ksmiami: my parents used them, gross gross gross ashes sitting there full up for days. Flicking ash out the windows then. It wasn’t easy to pull out full ashtrays to dump. Or my parents had other things on their minds. Nasty habit; lovely people.

  60. 60.

    patrick II

    Why is his hair so white? I saw him at some bits of a rally from a couple of weeks ago; it was the usual color.  It could not have grown out gray since then and I doubt he uses gray hair dye.  So, he is either wearing a wig during his rallies or this is an old picture. Unless someone can come up with something else.

  61. 61.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @FelonyGovt:

    Is that photo real? He looks AWFUL and sick

    Oh, it’s real.  Trump has declined physically as well as mentally.  He always looked strange, but now he looks like he’s melting.  Not just old, but decrepit.  I’ve been noticing it.  The more people see him as the election goes on, the more it will hit them.  Biden looks and acts like you hope you will when you get his age.  Trump looks and talks like you’re scared you will.

    EDIT – @patrick II:

    Why is his hair so white?

    It always is in photos without makeup.  I think something he puts in his hair rather than dye it makes the yellow color.

  62. 62.

    Baud

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Biden looks and acts like you hope you will when you get his age.  Trump looks and talks like you’re scared you will.

    Oh, that’s good. Should be repeated.

  69. 69.

    Chris Johnson

    Am Gen X. We didn’t do it. If we did you can’t prove it. :D

    It can’t have been us, there aren’t enough of us. And to this day nobody notices us. And Millennials incessantly call us boomers, which doesn’t go over well, but that’s why it’s Millennial humor so they only get worse.

    In our defense if we did vote for Trump (I sure didn’t) it was because we believed he was not real. And turns out, yeah we had his number, he IS not real and that’s why we liked him, which is OUR humor and our bad and just goes to underscore our nihilism.

    It’s nice that less doomed generations exist. Gives an old GenXer hope and a little bit of sad amusement. Yeah, we saw the worst… but survived it, and that should give everyone else a bit of hope, too.

  70. 70.

    TBone

    @Frankensteinbeck: I have temporary hair dye.  I used to use it to blot out my gray streaks in the front. Now IDGAF since I earned every gray.  It’s the same stuff that caused Rudy to have brown rivulets running down his sweaty face.  Rump prolly uses same stuff or the new spray on equivalent.

  71. 71.

    EarthWindFire

    @eclare: I’m one year behind you. I won’t deny that our generation has more than its share of Reaganite assholes. But, as one of Nancy’s old just say no commercials said, we learned it from watching you. I saw plenty of Boomers turn their backs on their old idealism. They raised Gen X.

  73. 73.

    MagdaInBlack

    @EarthWindFire: Ya know, I often ask myself that question, when people complain about the next generation (whatever generation that may be) or about their own kids:  Well, who raised them?

  74. 74.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Chetan Murthy: I’m a GenXer too. Yes we broke, barely for TiFG but not as heavily as boomers so if a boomer is claiming that’s how we fucked it all up well take long look in the mirror because you’re even more to blame, generally speaking.

    I’ve never voted for a Republican for POTUS and volunteered for the Dukakis campaign in my first election…boy was that thankless.

    At least we were steeped in irony growing up though so can get a laugh out of it when some Gen Zer wearing a Nirvana t shirt says OK boomer to us.

  76. 76.

    K-Mo

    @eclare:

    https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a1451/worst-generation-0400/

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/when-comes-baby-boomers-still-all-about-me-180953030/

    https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/keller-the-entitled-generation.html

    https://www.audacy.com/fm1019/blogs/matt-malone/study-shows-baby-boomers-most-sensitive-and-self-centered

    https://newrepublic.com/article/94550/baby-boomers-selfish-social-security-welfare-capitalism

    Etc

  77. 77.

    Princess

    My god, Trump looks awful. I thought he had Ozempic-ed himself into losing lots of weight. I guess it was interfering with his cheeseburger enjoyment so he stopped.

    This whole generations thing is nothing but marketing categories, designed to sell us stuff by slicing us into affinity cohorts.

    The Boomers were a one- time phenomenon of rapidly expanding population and economic growth. Gen X was invented by Douglas Copeland and was originally much smaller, like 1965-75. Anyone remember Generation Y? They stopped talking about that when they decided Millenials would be helpful at a category. Don’t make this stuff your entire personality. It’s not real.

  78. 78.

    Eyeroller

    @K-Mo: I am a second-half Boomer (“Generation Jones”) and we usually get tagged as particularly selfish and status conscious (“keeping up with the Joneses” was the origin of the term).  I think it’s true that experiences when young do shape people–my age group had a lot of competition for jobs etc., but we also were catered to by corporations because we were such a large market.

    A lot of GenX consists of the children of the Silent Generation.  Only the older Boomers might have had Xers.  One of the reasons GenX is so small is that their Silent Generation parents would have been born during the Depression or WWII and for some mysterious reason (/s if not obvious), the birthrate was low during those years.  So that’s a small generation also.  Silents are also for some reason very conservative.  Millenials are the “echo boom.”

    But what we’re avoiding here is that this is largely about white people.  Cohorts get less and less “white” the younger they are.  White people stopped voting for Democrats in the aftermath of the Civil Rights era and haven’t really come back.  Younger white people are “better” in our view, but not as much as we’d like, and any increase in liberalism among whites seems to be largely due to young women.  We’ve all heard about the issues of young white men.

  79. 79.

    Nukular Biskits

    Good mornin, y’all!

    Rain on the way again today down here. Which is why I planted three trees yesterday: 2 Eastern Redbuds and a bottlebrush tree/bush.  Wanted to plant more but running out of time.

    This morning? Just gonna drink coffee, read the news and visit with my sister.

  80. 80.

    AM in NC

    @piratedan:  I’ve been doing that at the FOX website.  Politely refuting their points with receipts; informing them of entire stories they’re being kept ignorant of; AND explicitly pointing out that their FOX bubble makes them think they are a majority, and then they are repeatedly shocked when they lose elections.

    I remind them that, outside their billionaire-funded propaganda channel, large majorities of Americans support abortion access; support taxing billionaires more to shore up Social Security; support funding Ukraine to take down Putin; want the Affordable Care Act.  MAGA is against ALL of those things, so don’t be surprised you lose elections.

    Since a decent number of older FOXbots also support these things, I figure it’s a good way to attack both FOX and drive a wedge between the MAGA and National Security Republicans of Old.

  81. 81.

    Nukular Biskits

    With reference to the discussion (at least that of the first twenty or so comments) about generations and who bears what amount of fault for the current state of things, I offer this:

    Every generationBlames the one beforeAnd all of their frustrationsCome beating on your door

    Mike + the Mechanics, “The Living Years”

     

  82. 82.

    K-Mo

    @Eyeroller:

    Gen X is stereotypically sarcastic, cynical, disaffected and noted for rolling their eyes

    Boomers are stereotypically selfish, self-absorbed, and self-righteous.

    A lot of ink has been spilled blaming boomers for our current ills, generally because they started out so idealistic and then sold out to live in the burbs.

    I agree with you that all of this is driven by the dominant, white, wealthy members of the generations who have defined the cultural zeitgeists.  There’s a lot of interesting variation in human experience within.  Maybe we’ll see that rise more to the surface in generations to come.

  83. 83.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Baud:

    Never trust anyone over 5.

    And, in keeping with the wisdom found in song lyrics, I offer this:

    Old dogs care about you even when you make mistakes

    God bless little children while they’re still too young to hate.

    Tom. T. Hall, “Watermelon Wine”

  84. 84.

    Scout211

    @Princess: My god, Trump looks awful. I thought he had Ozempic-ed himself into losing lots of weight. I guess it was interfering with his cheeseburger enjoyment so he stopped.

     

    I would like to see when that photo was actually taken because it looks very much like those golf pictures that were taken during his term of office that embarrassed him.  I really don’t think that is a recent photo but I could be wrong. I don’t even know if they were recent photos when they first went viral during his term, but they really embarrassed him.

    He has lost weight recently and does look a bit thinner now.  I really don’t think that photo is a recent photo, but who cares? If it embarrasses him I applaud the photo going viral again.

  85. 85.

    Salty Sam .

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:   Few political arguments are more useless than people of different ages insulting one another.

    Nominatd!

    … and now it’s time to leave this thread and go do something less boring.

  88. 88.

    Scout211

    @Another Scott: Thanks!  So the photo was from August 2023, way before he started his weight loss, possible Ozempic-taking regimen.  Not a recent photo but not from 4 years ago.

  89. 89.

    Betty

    @Chetan Murthy: I believe it was the same Sarah Longwell featured in the video above who said the Stormy Daniels case could be good for Trump because it shows male vigor. Two things: it was a quite a few years ago now and I believe Stormy said there wasn’t that much vigor involved.

  90. 90.

    prostratedragon

    @stacib:  We also had a few Tad’s, e.g. one around State and Randolph. I remember $1.49 there and $1.95 in NYC, so NotMax must be truly The Ancient of Days.

  92. 92.

    SFAW

    Gee, with all the inter-generational slap-fighting going on, I was kinda hoping we’d migrate into a “the music those kids lissen to today is terrible. In MY day …” sober and rational discussion.

    But so glad it distracted from Anne Laurie’s original thesis/post, because … something something mumble something.

  93. 93.

    Seonachan

    I know no one is reading this thread by now, but I just want to point out re: Gen X voting patterns that the age brackets in the 2020 exit poll cited above don’t quite match up with generational cohorts. The poll shows people aged 45-64 voting Trump over Biden 50-49%. But in 2020 Gen X was aged 40-55; so this age bracket included 9 years’ worth of younger Baby Boomers and excluded 5 years of younger Gen Xers.

    The Pew Center did a study that explicitly broke down the vote by generation, and it shows Gen X going for Biden 51-48, with Baby Boomers going for Trump by the same margin. So I guess the only thing we can conclude is that both generations are moderate centrists who are eager to vote No Labels this year (/s),

  94. 94.

    StringOnAStick

    @Quadrillipede: That was fantastic!  I’m sharing that link widely!  So much great information that is so relevant to current culture war insanity and a bit that is very relevant to a misdiagnosis I received as a teen.

  95. 95.

    Another Scott

    @patrick II: I think it’s safe to assume that undated photos on the intertubes are never current.  Stuff is always being recycled.

    (See above – that photo is from August 2023.)

    I initially thought that that photo couldn’t be him – the nose is all wrong.  I guess carrying an extra 50-100 pounds, and being a horrible person, will do that to your face…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  96. 96.

    Another Scott

    @K-Mo: Made me click.  First one – Paul Begala.

    Nope.  [ ctrl-w ]

    …

    Reagan wasn’t a boomer.  He was born in 1911.  He’s part of the “Greatest Generation” [ spit! ]  Gingrich wasn’t a boomer.  He was born in 1943.  He’s part of the “Silent Generation” [ spit! ]  Maybe political monsters have nothing to do with what generation they’re in.

    [ rant ] Generations are defined as the average reproductive age of females when they have their first child.  That’s it.   It’s not about hair styles or music tastes or buying habits or political views. [ /rant ]

    ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  99. 99.

    Ruckus

    @sab:

    Everyone declines as they age. They do so at different rates for sure but everyone does. It becomes less obvious in people that have some health issues that really aren’t normal decline. Alzheimers for example. And even there it’s not a by the numbers event or a by the numbers rate. All living creatures stop at some point and at some rate. Had a cousin that made 6 months, his aunt made 95 yrs. It’s life, in all it’s versions, hills, valleys, success, and rates of decline.

  100. 100.

    Ruckus

    @sab:

    Sorry about your dad. I was sitting with mine, in his hospital bed, with my arm around him when he passed. There was zero question in my mind that he had but my sisters sitting a couple feet away didn’t believe me. I had to order them to get the doctor to confirm it.

    Your point that they are not decent people is, in my mind, absolutely correct. They had him for a father, and they hung around him, seemingly worshiping him. I doubt that they would ever conceive of him as anything less than the greatest. Greatest what I won’t say but I will put it only in  negative terms.

  101. 101.

    Ruckus

    @Quadrillipede:

    Generations are always mixes of human beings. Some good, some not so much, some great and some are just pure shit with feet. It isn’t generational, it isn’t rational, it is normal, it is more obvious currently because of things like what we are doing right now – open communications, TV, that there are a LOT more of us than when I was born (and we do know what causes that!) but it is humanity. There are all possible ranges of humanity. We have to control the worst and hopefully get them to adjust, but we also have to accept that not everyone is going to be on the positive side of the aisle, that is humanity. No matter how hard we try, no matter how little we try we are never all going to agree with all the rest of us. We run the gamut of possibilities – we are human.

  107. 107.

    Manyakitty

    @Paul in KY: same. Or every single day since then. How does the relentless drip of charge after charge, fine after fine, case after case, not wear him down?

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