Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

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

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Even though I know this is a bad idea, I’m off to do it anyway!

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

White supremacy is terrorism.

“But what about the lurkers?”

It’s a doggy dog world.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

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

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

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

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Wee Hours Open Thread

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Figuring we’d get trick-or-treaters since our temporary headquarters are in town, I purchased some supplies.

Tootsie Pop and bag of M&Ms

We didn’t get a single door knock. I should have bought repellent items like Twizzlers and Sour Patch Kids. Because I’m definitely going to eat the M&Ms and Tootsie Pops.

***

Speaking of repellent items, here’s a headline you don’t want just days before the voting ends:

Video of Donald Trump ‘Struggling’ to Enter Garbage Truck Goes Viral

The GOP candidate is running around pretending to be a garbage man in a high-viz safety vest, which clashes hideously with his splotchy orange burnt umber face makeup.

Wee Hours Open Thread 2

Bitter experience prevents me from being super confident in the outcome of the election, but damn! I like our chances.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

170Comments

  3. 3.

    Lily

    We’ll always have the memorabilia washing up in thrift stores and clogging storm drains around McDonald’s.

  4. 4.

    Lapassionara

    Who is buying the ever darkening foundation for him? I’m thinking whoever gets this for him is trying to sabotage his campaign.

  5. 5.

    Ramalama

    Betty, I’m not as remote as you all are in the swamp but our little house is tucked away on a very steep hill in the mountains and we have never had a kid come begging for candy in my 20 years of being in Quebec. However we hung out on the single Main Street eating a sandwich at the only cafe where kids in their mostly homemade but fabulous costumes strolled by to collect candy from workers from the ville , also dressed up, along with the few businesses still open. It was really fun to see so many local people in our mostly deserted town.The mega rich with their extra houses come for a couple weekends and are loaded with nannies. Saw none of them. The downtown Deserted due to mismanagement I think. Anyway several kids walking past gave ME candy. I was not wearing a costume. I think it started as a joke and kept going. My wife said I give off candy vibes. My siblings last night agreed about me and my candy vibes.

    It was 70 degrees, the hottest Halloween ever for us.

  7. 7.

    Suzanne

    Well, we ran out of candy after 90 minutes. (Official city trick-or-treating is two hours.) My kids each got about a grocery bag full of candy. Most of this is going to disappear.

  9. 9.

    eclare

    @Lapassionara:

    Anne Laurie posted yesterday that he insists on doing his own makeup because he doesn’t trust anyone else to do it right.  He is getting more and more sloppy, whether that’s due to vision, exhaustion, mental decline or stress, who knows.  Probably some combo.

  10. 10.

    Juju

    Ooh. Tootsie Pops. I could go for a couple of those.

    I glanced through a previous thread and someone mentioned that Trump is suing 60 Minutes/ CBS for 10 billion dollars. That doesn’t sound like the action of a confident candidate. More like a baby man. Wahhhhh, they edited Kamala’s interview and she was so good it made me look bad, and I didn’t even do an interview because I didn’t want to be fact checked. Wahhhh!  If CBS showed the unedited interview we would probably find out Harris was excellent unedited as well.

  11. 11.

    Lily

    TP just nominated rfk for women’s health commander instead of shanahan..  people say rfk can’t handle all the agencies and departments allegedly bestowed on him but the work under the title has never been his problem.  He’s the font at the top of the stationery.

  13. 13.

    Ramona

    Insomniac me has spent the night watching the 1972 Cabaret on Tubi while reading a 2001 essay on all the versions of Isherwood’s “Goodbye to Berlin” based musicals. An excerpt from this essay:
    What does Cabaret have to teach us in 2001? That it’s not okay to ignore what’s going on around us, that we cannot allow our world to be less than it should be, that we should never keep quiet, that it’s important to participate, that we have a responsibility to each other and to our community, that any discrimination, any indignity, any prejudice, no matter how slight must be brought out into the light of day and condemned.

    Ironically, every ad break airs 3 or so repetitions of a Heritage Foundation ad knocking Kamala and Biden for inflation in 2022 and 2023! The Heritage Foundation are the ones whose rhetoric rhymes with that of the Nazis!

  14. 14.

    Jerry

    Man, that last photo will haunt me for life. Also, because of that photo, he will have the cheap blow-up sex doll vote locked down.

  20. 20.

    ColoradoGuy

    How about Pumpkinface?

    The reality-TV entertainment biz has a hell of a lot to answer for.

  23. 23.

    brendancalling

    @Ramona: I have two friends in Nashville—both very liberal and politically aware—who are always posting videos of themselves dancing at the honky tonks. It always reminds me of “Cabaret.”

    On a side note, Trump looks like an Oompa Loompa.

  24. 24.

    TBone

    @Ramona: those are words I live by:

    What does Cabaret have to teach us in 2001? That it’s not okay to ignore what’s going on around us, that we cannot allow our world to be less than it should be, that we should never keep quiet, that it’s important to participate, that we have a responsibility to each other and to our community, that any discrimination, any indignity, any prejudice, no matter how slight must be brought out into the light of day and condemned.

    Also, I love that movie, and have you seen the MAGA idiots in their Halloween “costumes” where they’re wearing garbage bags labeled Trump Trash?  How original 🙄

    It is time for the trash to take itself out.

  30. 30.

    Lily

    Our trickertreater volume was never the same after the mall went after them, sadly, but this year the leaks in its  roof have become too horrendous.  The llc that owns it is ghosting the town.  So we had 7 kids instead  of the traditional 3.  The stores on the Main Street attracted them instead with Trunk or Treat.   ppl were to drive their cars , park and hand out candy from the open back. Time saver for the parents.  The town has been dreaming up events lately to bring people in throughout the year with blurbs in the local news.

  31. 31.

    geg6

    @TBone:

    Did you see what they did in Mt. Pleasant, Westmoreland County?  The fire department has a Halloween parade.  One of the floats had a bunch of “Secret Service agents” riding it and had someone dressed up as Kamala Harris walking behind it, chained to the float and in handcuffs.  Unbelievable.

  32. 32.

    Another Scott

    We usually get 2-3 dozen TorTers. We got maybe one dozen last night. :-/ I’ll be taking about 5 pounds of candy into work so that we don’t eat it all here.

    Meanwhile, …

    Georgian opposition calls for more protests as exit pollster says official result ‘impossible’

    The world continues to get more complicated from VVP’s dangerous antics. Harris will have to hit the ground running and will need a sensible House and Senate. We need to defeat the monsters.

    Forward!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  33. 33.

    Ken

    The struggle to climb into the garbage truck wasn’t nearly as alarming as when he reached for the door handle and missed, twice.

    By “alarming” I mean what a normal person would feel after seeing that. It’s clear none of his staff or family care.

  34. 34.

    Anyway

    @raven: I had the big Costco chocolate bag and it’s all gone. In the beginning I was letting kids take more than one and then had to be grinch and limit to one. Majority of the kids were not from my ‘hood but I’m cool with that.
    Now to stay away from the surplus candy at work …

  36. 36.

    lowtechcyclist

    Got all of five trick-or-treaters last night, they were all around 5-6 years old with parents watching from the street.  I’d had a bag of mini-Heath bars from last year in the basement fridge that I’d gone through about half of, and they took care of most of what had been left.  Five is about as many as we’ve gotten in the past fifteen years or so, so I figured I was adequately prepared and I didn’t have to buy any new candy to sit around the house and tempt me.

  38. 38.

    Marmot

    @Ramona:

    What does Cabaret have to teach us in 2001? That it’s not okay to ignore what’s going on around us, that we cannot allow our world to be less than it should be, that we should never keep quiet, that it’s important to participate, that we have a responsibility to each other and to our community, that any discrimination, any indignity, any prejudice, no matter how slight must be brought out into the light of day and condemned.

    I’ve never seen Cabaret, somehow. But I know a little bit about the plot, so it’s been on my mind a lot lately, anyway. Especially when I think about the people who decline when I’m trying to get them to register to vote.

    One dufus said, “nah, I don’t vote, but I don’t complain, so it’s fine,” and was a little smug about it. Other people can be sort of disdainful. (None of that inspires my respect, which I try to convey.) They should watch Cabaret. 

    Has anyone seen The Conformist? It’s anti-fascist and outstanding, and I need to see it again.

  41. 41.

    Tony Jay

    Tell you what I’m looking forward to. Once the results start piling in on Election Night and the sheer scale of America’s horrified recoil from everything Stench/Snowball ‘24 represents becomes undeniable, everything changes.

    Yes, the usual suspects will try their hardest to pivot towards a “Millions of unconvinced waverers lent Harris their votes – here’s 10 ways her unpreparedness could lead to disappointment and resentment” narrative, but that’s already baked into the mix. Back in the real world there’s a pretty good chance that the Coarse-Hair of Umber’s significant drag factor costs the GOP a swathe of otherwise winnable seats top to bottom and gives the Democrats a mandate to push back on all fronts.

    But what will be extra-sweet, Stench loses the last Teflon rags shielding him from judgement. All of those court cases treading water while the justice system waits to see if they’ll be up against a vengeful President and his army of cutthroats will have their answer, and it will be Full Ahead – Ramming Speed. He’ll have cost the Right three consecutive Presidential elections and drowned their Congressional hopes in his gold-plated toilet, and though the Mob might still want to defend him, the Money and the Machine will be angry.

    He’s going to go through some things. I’m going to enjoy that.

  42. 42.

    Betty Cracker

    @El Cruzado: In a thread yesterday, someone said it looks like Trump is about to break into a rendition of the minstrel standard “Mammy” in that photo. Accurate.

    It remains mind-boggling that the malevolent buffoon is polling above 2%.

  43. 43.

    Baud

    @satby:

    Exactly. Too many people still want to save Trump supporters rather than fight them.

    They own a lot of libs because they’re friends and family with a lot of libs, and only one side values that relationship.

  45. 45.

    bobbo

    “We’re leading in every – uh – in every state.”

    Yes, he’s somewhat prone to exaggeration, but I think he couldn’t remember the word “battleground” or even “swing” (which would also be a lie).

  48. 48.

    Elizabelle

    @geg6:

    One of the floats had a bunch of “Secret Service agents” riding it and had someone dressed up as Kamala Harris walking behind it, chained to the float and in handcuffs.

    That’s “Cabaret” territory right there. Horrible.

    And, WRT the 1972 Cabaret: saw it again last year on a big screen.  And realized.  I just do not like Liza Minelli.  She is too fake and hysterical seeming for me.  Although I know people loved her in that movie.

  50. 50.

    Tony Jay

    @Baud:

    I have bags of pep, oodles of it. And it’s been a long time since I could spend that currency in the UK, so you guys can have it free and gratis.

  51. 51.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Someone said something I thought was good:  Either everything we know about elections and electioneering is wrong, or the polls are, and we already know the polls are broken.  Trump is toast.  He looks like toast.

  52. 52.

    satby

    @Baud: And even though I’m pretty confident in a Harris win, afterward we will have to coexist and try to get things done with them. Which is why I respect the hell out of people like Biden, Harris, and all the professionals in our government who manage it. I’m sure my contempt would constantly leak through my gritted teeth if I had to work with them.

  53. 53.

    Elizabelle

    @Ken:  The only thing that bothers me about that is the possibility of  extreme bad health, or death, taking away the possibility of Trump facing earthly retribution and delayed justice for his many crimes and corruption.

    Also wonder if he will try the “reduced capacity” defense at trial.  None of which has stopped him for running for POTUS, or morons from supporting him, but it will be clear in a court of law that his mental state has declined in recent years.

  54. 54.

    Marmot

    @satby: He’s under-appreciating the power of motivated denial, and the appeal of the demagogue. Also, you can’t affect TFG voters by writing for them candidly and directly, which is what Robert’s wants, because he’s a decent and straightforward person.

    But you can affect them through writing.

  55. 55.

    Princess

    @satby: Obviously talking about Trump’s character will make no dent at this point. In fact, the reverse — they love that we think he’s a bad human.

    When I’ve encountered Trump voters in the wild (on friends’ FB feeds), I’ve exclusively focused on tariffs and how they will crash the economy. I doubt it’s worked but at least it’s new and I’m arguing on their turf, not ours. And I’ve pointed out how abortion laws kill women to my pro life circle, but that’s mostly to demonstrate to them what hypocrites they are without actually calling them hypocrites to their faces.

    I still think we’ll win but I want whatever Tony Jay is smoking over there in England. This is not going to be a blow out. What’s going on in Nevada right now shows that they have more of a ground game than we’re giving them credit for, at least there. And that if the polls are off (I believe they are) it’s by a few percent, not landslide territory.

  56. 56.

    TBone

    @satby: thank you for sharing that excellent  articulation of why I say there are not enough adjectives to describe his type of repulsive.  Spot on.

  57. 57.

    p.a.

    @Baud: Too many people still want to save Trump supporters rather than fight them.

     

     

    They’re poison in the nation’s bloodstream.  Marginal electoral losses won’t affect them.  The Republican party will not (IMHO) cleanse itself and relegate these people to the margins where they belong (well, actually they belong back under their rocks.)  The party has to collapse, but it won’t as long as the billionaires keep financing it.  So I have no effing idea how this shakes out positively long term.

  58. 58.

    Anyway

    @eclare: another here that hasn’t seen Cabaret… I have a slight resistance to “musicals” and think of it as one.

    ETA exception for Hedwig ( which I’ve seen more than once)

  59. 59.

    Jeffro

    I took a couple of minutes this morning over coffee to explain the past 48 hours to my normie better half, Mrs Fro

    to say that she was floored would be quite the understatement… 😁

    She has been nervous/pessimistic about the election all year, but she sure seemed in a good mood after coffee!

  60. 60.

    eclare

    @Anyway:

    I saw Hedwig the play in Chicago!  And I have the soundtrack.

    As far as movie musicals, I thought along your lines, but then a friend dragged me to Chicago.  Wow.  Great movie.

  61. 61.

    geg6

    @Anyway:

    The mayor says the FD does not take float applications and that they’ve never had anything like this happen before.  But she said they will now meet to see if that should be changed.  My eyes are rolling so far back in my head, I can see behind me.  I remember articles about how Westmoreland County was a hotbed of PA KKK back during the Clinton years.

  62. 62.

    TBone

    Senator Casey’s challenger is going through some things:

    The book, published in December 2023, describes how McCormick intimidated Stefanova at a meeting at a diner to ensure that she stayed quiet. When Stefanova protested, McCormick reportedly leaned in and said, “Maybe the issue is that you aren’t being a supportive public presence for us,” a posture and a statement she took as threatening.

    Book: GOP’s McCormick Led ‘Bro’ Culture At Hedge Fund
    An (alleged) sexual assault victim was publicly humiliated and effectively pushed out of a hedge fund office while it was led by David McCormick

  64. 64.

    Lily

     

    @TBone: In 2016 my coworker had a vision of Dems selling garbage bags printed w his name that would line the streets on trash days.

  65. 65.

    Ramalama

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Hilarious, BUT my first reaction, as a kid trick or treating in America in the 1970s, was, “Where did this candy come from?” Took a beat and then realized something like that doesn’t happen here (yet, maybe), and enjoyed being surprised by it.

  67. 67.

    satby

    @Anyway: Too bad. It’s a tour de force depiction of the banality of evil and the way fascism creeps into the mainstream until it controls a country while the people are distracted and entertaining themselves to death. And I don’t like musicals much either.

  68. 68.

    Baud

    @p.a.:

    No one knows the future. We can either let that deter us from doing the right thing or we can ignore it and do the right thing.

  70. 70.

    K-Mo

    @satby:

    Lol we’ve been in this mode for so long and it’s exhausting.  Trying to snare that voter who doesn’t care about the rape stuff or the racism, fascism, misogyny, and utter Malignorance ( I just made that word up) of Trump but might care about IVF or some local infrastructure project, and then convince them to vote.  5 more days.

  73. 73.

    TBone

    @geg6: our rumpy neighbors throw parties a lot.  When we first moved in here, we were glad that they made a lot of effort to be neighborly and gregarious.  I had to leave the first party we were invited to because of a maga guest, but I didn’t let on why (repulsive comments about abortion and Planned Parenthood).  At another, my hubby wore a dress shirt that could be mistaken for a Hawaiian shirt and the rumpy neighbor dad was thrilled that he was wearing a Boogaloo uniform.  Giggling like a schoolgirl.  We stopped attending invites, and then J7 made it clear to them when I threw open a window like Scrooge on Xmas morning, shouting at the son skulking around in stark fear “WE SEE YOU!”

  75. 75.

    TBone

    @Marmot: ugh!!!

    @Lily: trash bags make poor body armor 😆

    (ETA: The problem with that putting garbage bags out plan is that it adds to his free campaign publicity.)

  76. 76.

    3Sice

    ANSI class 2 vest.

    No one hates lumpy more than his advance team. That’s cheapy multi-pack PPE. He looks like a crossing guard.

    On the G they wear better stuff because outdoor work, and for resistance to garbage and sludge water.

  77. 77.

    Scout211

    This is just so sad. LOL

    Elon’s vote canvassing team is getting big media attention now. Long, but very interesting read.  A few snippets:

    ‘All hell has broken loose’: Inside Elon Musk’s high-stakes pro-Trump door-knocking effort

    . . .

    But the people who spoke to NBC News, many of whom have years of experience in GOP field operations, said the operation may not be the well-oiled machine many in the party might hope it is, especially considering how much money is behind the effort.

    In particular, they raised concerns about canvassers’ submitting an inordinate amount of suspect data. That data, some of which NBC News has reviewed, includes entries submitted far from the home or while canvassers are logged into Wi-Fi networks — telltale signs that a door was not knocked on, sources said. In addition, a video explaining how to “spoof” one’s location while submitting data drew attention  in Nevada and Arizona, raising further concerns.

    “I know it’s been flagged for America PAC that this has been transpiring,” an operative formerly on the effort said.

    As some of that data spilled into public view last month, an operative close to the effort said: “All hell has broken loose” inside the PAC.

    . . .

    Data reviewed by NBC News from Campaign Sidekick, the app America PAC’s door-knockers are using as they canvass, showed what sources described as an inordinate number of potentially suspicious data entries filed in recent weeks.

    In Arizona, nearly a quarter of data entries submitted in early- to mid-October were flagged in the app’s “unusual activity” log. That trigger automatically fires when door-knockers submit entries more than 100 feet away from the homes they are marking off, or if their locations are marked as a flat “zero” feet away from the homes, which occurs when the app is connected to Wi-Fi — which, in most instances, should not be the case for door-knockers walking around outside. In Nevada, more than 46,000 suspicious doors were entered into the system from Oct. 12 to Oct. 19.

    . . .

    Some of the people who spoke to NBC News noted that Musk himself is relatively new to the political arena — as are many of the young canvassers working on the operation — which has frustrated some of the more experienced operatives.

    “I don’t even know where some of these people came from. Some of these people came straight out of the comments of the Nelk Boys YouTube channel,” an operative aligned with the PAC said, referring to the pro-Trump influencers. “These are, like, broccoli-cut Zoomers.”

    The operative formerly on the effort described a “shock wave” reverberating around the universe of operatives and canvassers currently or at one time close to the PAC as more information about the canvassing effort was made public over the last 10 days.

    “Elon Musk is brilliant at what Elon Musk does,” this person said. “You would never ask a political consultant to build rocket ships. I don’t think you should be asking someone that builds rocket ships to manage political operations when they don’t 100% understand what they’re looking for.”

  80. 80.

    narya

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen “Cabaret,” but I recorded it when TCM played it a few weeks/months ago and intend to watch it. In the same vein, last night I was (re)watching “All the President’s Men,” and was struck by the amount of actual footwork they had to do–looking up Dahlberg’s name/number in phone books from around the country, until someone came in and said he was from Minnesota; finding a phone booth and having coins; literally knocking on doors.

    Re: TCFG’s makeup: I’ve seen some people note that this is further evidence of his decline. He notoriously doesn’t allow anyone to do his hair and makeup, and he is less able to do it competently. I don’t GAF, I just want him and his minions to go away.

  81. 81.

    Elizabelle

    Here’s the end of Scott Miller’s article on Cabaret; not wrong in 1999, and even more pertinent in 2024.

    And, knowing what we know about Germany then: a lot of the issue was the complicity of the wealthy and industrialists, and the pre-obedience.  Which we saw this very week, from the LA Times and then — and worse — from Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post.

    What would have happened in Germany in the early 1930s if more people had voted? What would have happened if people like Sally Bowles had paid attention to what was happening in the Reichstag? What would have happened if people like Fraulein Schneider had stood up and said loudly and decisively that they will not accept intimidation, that they will not be bullied, that they will not go along in the name of self-preservation? What would have happened if the people of Germany had listened more closely to the Nazis and then stood up and denounced Adolf Hitler for the madman he was?

    Would things have been different? Who knows?

    But there was some moment, before the point of no return, when the Germans could have gone down a different road and saved the world from the horrors that should not have been inevitable.

    Cabaret is about that moment, a time when it wasn’t yet too late, when Germany wasn’t yet locked into the path that would lead to the murder of millions of Jews. But the people of Germany couldn’t see what we see. They didn’t know how their choices, their fear, their apathy would lead to bigger things. People like Fraulein Schneider and Fraulein Kost were busy just trying to survive. People like Sally Bowles were busy having too good a time.

    The extermination of the Jews started small, in tiny, daily indignities, in little, nearly unnoticeable acts of prejudice, in seemingly innocent jokes, in the words people chose. Could the same thing happen today? Of course it could. Right wing political leaders in America today say pretty much the same things the Nazis said about gays, women, family, religion, culture, education, and patriotism. It may not seem dangerous right now, but it didn’t seem dangerous in Germany in 1930 either.

    We have an obligation to learn from what happened in Germany. We have an obligation to make different choices. If we don’t do it today, it may be too late tomorrow.

  84. 84.

    catclub

    @Ken: By “alarming” I mean what a normal person would feel after seeing that. It’s clear none of his staff or family care.

     

    They are ALL about the photo op image. they will care.

  85. 85.

    eclare

    @Elizabelle:

    Thanks!  I just checked, and it’s not on any of my services.  I don’t think I could put up with endless Heritage Foundation commercials to watch for free.  But it’s going on my list.

  86. 86.

    Baud

    @Princess:

    And that if the polls are off (I believe they are) it’s by a few percent, not landslide territory.

     

    It’ll probably be close, but it only takes a few percent for an election to become a landslide

    ETA: it won’t be a 1984 level landslide. That’s out of reach.

  87. 87.

    catclub

    @Scout211: “I don’t even know where some of these people came from. Some of these people came straight out of the comments of the Nelk Boys YouTube channel,” an operative aligned with the PAC said, referring to the pro-Trump influencers. “These are, like, broccoli-cut Zoomers.”

     

    new expression for me. Funny hair?

  88. 88.

    Elizabelle

    @p.a.:  I think we need to take down the influence of Fox News Channel (available on US military bases) and rightwing fake news.

    I know we have the First Amendment, but other countries do not let this filth infest their body politic.  Canada, and Germany, and likely other nations would not allow the Murdochs of the world to establish a foothold for their antidemocratic polarizing propaganda. Which is what it is.  It is designed and implemented to make our country ungovernable, because of all the disinformation and polarization.

    We don’t have such a mania for the free market that we allow US toymakers to produce Bag O Glass (remember the Saturday Night Live skit; Dan Ackroyd!) or My Little Lead teething whistle.

    How do we change this system?  An updated Fairness Doctrine, and make it apply to cable and other dissemination methods not yet developed?

  90. 90.

    Elizabelle

    @eclare:  Would bet your library, or a nearby one, might have a DVD.  Albeit, you may no longer have a DVD player.

    I think it’s occasionally on Amazon Prime (ugh, Bezos again) for free.

  91. 91.

    Ken

    @Elizabelle: Also wonder if he will try the “reduced capacity” defense at trial.

    Dammit. You’ve made me find something to like about those horrendous Supreme Court decisions allowing mentally ill and incapable people to be executed.

  93. 93.

    KeninHogtown

    A very fine movie is V for Vendetta.  British, setting, but folks finally get fed up with the fascist government.

  94. 94.

    Ken

    @Scout211:

    “Elon Musk is brilliant at what Elon Musk does,” this person said.

    Except Musk doesn’t build rocket ships (and when he gets involved with the launches, they explode). It’s increasingly obvious that the only thing Elon Musk is brilliant at is self-promotion.

  95. 95.

    TBone

    @Elizabelle: Rick Steves’ recent video and xit made me applaud him again:

    Many don’t realize that the first people Hitler sent to his concentration camps weren’t everyday Jewish citizens, but his political opponents. So, when Trump rants about retribution, locking up his opponents, and giving them “very long sentences,” I can’t help but take him seriously… because history teaches us that is what fascist dictators do during their “Day One” period to consolidate their power. (After all, if you’re hellbent on staying in power but aren’t likely to win the next election, you can’t have your political opponents running around free.) To keep fascism out of our lives, vote for democracy!

    The short video, it is powerful.

    https://x.com/RickSteves/status/1851409034718691785

    🔥

  97. 97.

    Barry

    @Lily: “He’ll be selling $189 construction worker vests by the end of the weekend.”

     

    You misspelled “$189 (recurring monthly payments of same)”

  99. 99.

    Ramona

    @eclare: Ooh! That essay I cited made me wonder whether the version of Cabaret for our fraught time had come out. Thanks for letting me know. The movie is free on Tubi.

  100. 100.

    JML

    Snowed yesterday, so my usual smallish crew of trick or treaters went down to zero. Too bad, I had good candy for them, and I let kids take it by the handful.

    I like seeing the costumes (someone people are really creative!), and there’s nothing better then telling a wee small child that it’s ok for them to have a little more when they see their favorite candy.

    Oh, well.

  101. 101.

    JoeyJoeJoe

    @geg6: that’s interesting about Westmoreland County.  Clinton actually won the county in both 1992 and 1996 even as that was happening.  I think even Dukakis won it. SWPA was very heavily democratic in the 1980s and into the 1990s.  Mondale even beat Reagan by a wide margin in the area overall

  102. 102.

    Marmot

    @Ken: A normie friend said something about Musk being a genius just the other day. He’s no genius.

    But why does he have that reputation? Was it just the slavering obsequiousness of our business and “tech” press in the presence of someone who struck it rich? Splashy PR events? The man is trash.

  104. 104.

    Ramona

    @Marmot: I’d never watched it either but I figured I’d try to channel my election time anxiety into partaking of art with a message instead of grinding my teeth.

  105. 105.

    Elizabelle

    @TBone:  Rick Steves has a really good, shortish program on Fascism.  Time to rewatch it.

    I bought a streaming version on (*sigh*) Amazon Prime.

  107. 107.

    Ramona

    @TBone: I haven’t seen the Magarbage but it might have been a jackal here who said we should say to them, Oh! You are dressed as medical care workers deprived of personal protection equipment by the Trump administration!

  108. 108.

    TBone

    @TBone: Hitler kept his political opponents alive in the first concentration camps from 1934 until 1945, when he knew he would lose the war.  Just before the end of WWII, he had them all murdered.

    This is why I believe in the stout courage of Liz Cheney, et al.  Brass cojones are needed now more than ever.

  110. 110.

    Peale

    @Scout211: he’s disrupting traditional models of canvassing where canvassers knock on doors and try to be polite and connect with the residents.

  111. 111.

    TBone

    @Elizabelle: 💜 he has done much for our cause!  I saw his special program on fascism when it first came out and had no doubt how he votes.  But his vigorously STANDING UP this year still came as a welcome surprise! 💙

  116. 116.

    Peale

    @Marmot: oh my god, did Joan Walsh slobber over him at Salon and how charming he was. Plus he admitted to smoking pot! Swoooon. There were a lot of liberals taken in in the 2010s by the idea of this new CEO model.

  121. 121.

    Anyway

    You all convinced me – what version of “Cabaret” would you recommend for a first-timer?

    TIA!

  122. 122.

    Ramona

    @Marmot: found it on Kanopy. Am watching it now. I love the sound of Italian! Thanks many millions for this recommendation!

    I was 6 years old in 1970. Was the Red Brigade a problem in Italy in 1970?

  123. 123.

    Ramona

    @Elizabelle: thanks for finding and sharing the link Elizabelle. I was hoping that the copying and pasting the excerpt would also include the link but when it didn’t I was too distracted to copy and paste the link as well.

  126. 126.

    Marmot

    @Ramona: I looked it up recently, and it was available for rent or purchase only. But I’m sorry, I don’t remember the platform. Unfortunately, the trailer is kind of douchey and focuses only on its high artistry.

  127. 127.

    satby

    @Rileys Enabler: Thank you! He’s a special boy, but then we all think they’re all special. He’s going to be adoptable once he’s finally fully recovered.

    Just thinking about the kind of human who could willfully abuse a 4 month old puppy like that makes my blood boil.

  130. 130.

    Geminid

    @bobbo: Maybe Trump was afraid he’d mispronounce “battleground.” He can get tongue-tied now when he tries to pronounce three syllable words that fall outside his normal vocabulary.

    My guess is that Trump has had a series of ministrokes, or at least two. He was already dragging his right leg some earlier this Spring,, and it seems like he’s been slurring his words even more than normal since Summer.

    If this is the case, I expect the story will  start coming out next Wednesday, after he he’s lost.

  131. 131.

    Elizabelle

    @Ramona:  Thank YOU for finding the article.  It’s marvelous.

    Have always meant to read Isherwood’s stories, the source material.  See what got adapted, and how.

    Recently bought some books by Irmgard Keun, a young writer in 1930s Germany.  Her books were so descriptive the Nazis confiscated and banned them.  She ended up in exile.  Good enough for me.

    And.  It is interesting that her work is coming back for appreciation and reappraisal.  Cannot escape their relevance to today.

  133. 133.

    Ramalama

    @Anyway: ​
     
    I only like Liza Minelli in 2 things: Cabaret and Arrested Development. I didn’t realize there are other versions of Cabaret. I think I have my weekend full up with reading and seeing other versions.

  134. 134.

    Ramalama

    @Elizabelle: ​
    JESUS. This was written in 1999.

    The truth is neither homosexuals nor women were responsible for Germany’s war debts or the deadlock in the parliament, but the truth is often less important than emotion and fear. What’s truly disturbing is to realize that right wing politicians in America use the same tactics today, blaming homosexuals (the only American minority it’s still acceptable to demonize)* and sexual freedom in general for all America’s troubles. The only difference is that there’s no Adolf Hitler waiting to seize power.

    At least not right now.

    * (my emphasis) No longer true

  136. 136.

    Ramalama

    @Elizabelle: Forgive me for taking this another step further but there’s a fantastic illustrated book called Belonging – written and arted by a German woman living in the US. About how to be a German after WWII. I normally reserve my eyes to reading words – not a lot of illustration – but this book was so so so good. I bought it for a ton of family as presents a while back.

  137. 137.

    tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat)

    @satby: Don’t know if you will see this, but donated. My mom passed in 2023. She loved animals and often rescued them. I’ve been thinking a lot about her  as her birthday approaches and in her memory I donated. She would have been heartbroken over Kato’s situation. I can’t do much from Japan, but this much I can do. Thank you!

  139. 139.

    Glidwrith

    @Marmot: The Muskrat has had an ongoing huge PR campaign for years to hide the facts that he doesn’t have an engineering degree, that he didn’t found Tesla and was run out of PayPal before he ruined it. Only since he was stupid enough to open his yap and make a ridiculous offer to buy Twitter at an inflated price and then have to go through with it, is it becoming clearer that he’s just PR and a Nazi.

  141. 141.

    Elizabelle

    @Ramalama:  Thank you!  Never heard of Nora Krug, and would love to see that book.  Ordering it, not from Amazon!

    Here’s a New Yorker article about her and it.  Nora Krug is someone to watch.  From 2018:
    The Bracing Honesty of “Belonging,” a Graphic Memoir About German Identity

    …
    You have a young child—was that a factor in deciding to tackle this project? Are there German traditions you’ll be proud to pass on?

    I knew long before my child was born that I needed to write this book. As a German among non-Germans, I felt a growing urge to move beyond the abstract, collective guilt I had come to feel. Part of our German identity is, of course, its Nazi heritage. I want my daughter to grow up with the same sense of responsibility, but without the paralyzing guilt.

    “Pride” is a word I shy away from as a German, but of course I want my daughter to live with a sense of German identity. There is a whole cultural heritage that was lost because the Nazis largely misappropriated it—old folk songs from the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, for instance, that we were never taught at school. Many of those songs convey a notion of belonging, and emphasize the importance of old values such as steadfastness and faithfulness, a love for nature, the ability to accept death as part of life. Growing up without this heritage as an emotional anchor can leave you feeling utterly disoriented. I play these songs to my daughter regularly, and she sings along. I hope she always will.

    You talk in the book about learning, in school, about American cultural identity. Living in the U.S., how did you relate to that identity? Was it appealing?

    In German, we have a word called Zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl, meaning the sense of identifying with a larger group with which you share the same values and ideas. As I write in my book, we grew up using this word only to describe American cultural identity, but never our own, because the notion of believing in an idea bigger than yourself felt too close to what our people had aspired to under the Nazi regime.

    A lot of Germans feel critical toward the way America expresses its sense of national pride, but they forget that a country as large as the U.S.—that consists of so many different cultures, political perspectives, and religious systems—could never exist without the belief in such an overarching idea, as utopian as it may seem. [For myself,] as a German moving to the U.S., the prospect of cultural belonging held a particular appeal. Obviously, the U.S. has arrived at its own moment of identity crisis, and the question of whether we’ll learn from the past—our own and that of other countries—seems more pressing than ever before.

    Of course they have a word for it.  But how to pronounce it??  Here, we just say “jackals.”

     Zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl, meaning the sense of identifying with a larger group with which you share the same values and ideas

  142. 142.

    Bupalos

    Honey! The Safety Oompa Loompa is at the door again!

    Jesus! What does it want now?

    [weird  whiney sing-song noises]

    I think it said it wants to protect our women?!

    What the fuck does that mean? No, tell it we don’t want any of that.

    [weird whiney singsong noises, only faster]

    It says it wants to protect our women whether we like it or not.

  143. 143.

    JaneE

    I bought some pretzels and popcorn because I saw a young mother walking her toddler down our street about a week ago.  That was the first child I have seen on our street in about 5 years.  Sure enough, they took her trick-or-treating.  She (mom) chose pretzels.

    Exactly 1 trick-or-treater.

    At least the pretzels and popcorn are not so bad for me as candy.

  145. 145.

    evodevo

    @Scout211: Reminds me of the Bush regime sending Young Republicans to Iraq immediately after the 2003 debacle to “remake” the country’s financial/business sector, despite NONE of them actually having any experience building an economy or having local knowledge LOL.  The first thing they wanted to do was set up a stock exchange..

  146. 146.

    Ramona

    @Baud: Check to see if it’s on Kanopy. If your local library doesn’t make Kanopy available to your area you could get it through your college alumni account.

  147. 147.

    Lynn Dee

    That is Trump’s weirdest make-up job ever. Was he interrupted to go do the photo op? He looks he applied foundation to his lips but didn’t get around to the lipstick 💄

  148. 148.

    K-Mo

    @Glidwrith: He does seem to do a lot of monumentally dumb stuff.  But how did he become so rich?  Did he just make some good / lucky bets with daddy’s money?

  149. 149.

    RAM

    Our street is dark with few street lights and the houses are not close together so we get few, if any, trick or treaters. Kids these days just don’t figure the odds correctly. When I was a kid, my buddies and I favored streets like ours–I lived across the street from my current house when growing up–because we correctly calculated that with so few trick or treaters, the folks would likely give us more candy per stop,–which they did.

  150. 150.

    Ramona

    @Elizabelle: thanks for this recommendation.

    A German friend of mine in the nineties got me to watch The White Rose (the title is in German and I think it might be Die Weisse Rose) which is just an awesome story of the courage of young Germans printing and distributing an anti-Nazi pamphlet during WWII.

  151. 151.

    dnfree

    @Marmot: Tthe Trumpists I know aren’t influenced by writing, because they don’t read.  They watch YouTube videos, TikToks, Instagrams.  They don’t do subtlety or nuance or “both sides”.

  152. 152.

    Velocifowl

    @K-Mo:

    His family owned an emerald mine and when Peter Thiel booted him out of PayPal he still got a ton of money when that exploded.  His entire shtick since then is based off Tesla and SpaceX where in both cases he slurped up government contracts and tax breaks and acted as his own hype man which overly inflated the stock.

    Back in the Obama era conservatives hated Musk as another green energy boondoggle that was soaking tax payers.  Then Musk did a 180 the moment he might have to pay taxes and labor laws started to be an issue.

    To the extent his companies function it’s because they keep him away from actually running them.  The stuff he does directly run like X or The Boring Company they are shit shows.

  155. 155.

    Ramona

    @Ramalama: besides Isherwood’s “Goodbye to Berlin” on which Cabaret is based and the play “I am a camera”, I think the other versions are stage plays.

  156. 156.

    BellaPea

    @Elizabelle: I’m re-reading Ken Follett’s Century Trilogy, and have just started on the second book. It deals with the rise of facism across several countries, including Britain and Spain. The sections on the rise of Nazis in Germany is literally horrifying. So many things are scarily relevant to Trump and what is going on with our country today.

    I told Mr. Bella the photo of Dump in the garage truck reminded me of Dukakis in the tank. At least MD had enough sense not to plaster his face with nasty make-up.

  157. 157.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @JoeyJoeJoe: My paternal grandfather (who died when future-Dad was 4) is buried in Westmoreland, one reason we couldn’t find his grave for years. (We tramped all over Fayette Co where the family lived in those days until Find-A-Grave got around to that graveyard.). Remember Bill Clinton won WV twice. Westmoreland probably went over the Far Wrong cliff with the rest of Appalachia (of which it’s on the eastern fringe)..

  158. 158.

    Uncle Cosmo

    Oh and BTW FWIW the reason OrangeCandyass had trouble getting in the garbage truck is that he normally enters through the chute in back with the rest of the trash.zzz

  159. 159.

    Death Panel Truck

    Rained here last night. That kept the guttersnipes from our door. Begging for candy and all. Why can’t they just get jobs so they can buy their own candy? 😉

  160. 160.

    SomeRandomGuy

    He completely missed the side of his nose and the mustache area.

    I don’t want to say that’s a neuro sign because I don’t know,  But how do you look in a mirror, and not notice that huge gap?

     

    @Uncle Cosmo: Dude… that’s not true!

    He’s so big, they use the dumpster lift. And every now and then, the glint of his hair, in the late evening mist, and they mistake him for his dumpster fire campaign, and douse him in CO2 and flame retardant first….

  162. 162.

    brantl

    @Jerry:  I was thinking it was a picture of a new trashcan they’re going to market after the election but they’ll have to open up that tiny little mouth more.

  163. 163.

    artem1s

    @Marmot: They should watch Cabaret. 

    If you want to scare the hell of people have them watch Conspiracy.

    It does a great job of showing the banality of evil on display at the Wanesee Conference. A team of military leaders and lawyers (*cough*Roberts court*cough*) sat down and figured  a “legal” and cheap solution to separating the UnterMenschen and Ratten from their assets, liberty and lives.

    It’s chilling when they get to the part about how they want to handle Germans married to Jews or half Jews and have children.  They can opt to stay out of jail and the camps if they divorce their spouses and “disavow” them (turn them in). If the pure blood German parent agrees to sterilize them, they can keep their minor children with them as long as they are only a quarter Jewish. More than that and they go straight to Auschwitz.

  165. 165.

    Torrey

    @satby:

    Thank you for this. Donated. The puppy is just $45 away from the needed dental care. He looks very sweet–lab mix?

  166. 166.

    artem1s

    @Baud:

    ETA: it won’t be a 1984 level landslide. That’s out of reach.

    Normally I’d agree but the GOP and MSM desperation has been evoking that ‘Good News John McCain” flop sweat vibe for several months now.

  167. 167.

    Paul in KY

    @Tony Jay: God, I hope you’re right! I do feel much better about this one than I felt at this time in 2016.

    Slot’s doing a pretty good job so far, isn’t he? Looks like MU got the wrong Dutchman :-)

  168. 168.

    Ramalama

    @munira: I live in the Larry Mountains, aka, les Laurentides, or The Laurentian Mountains.

    Kind of want to not name the town specifically so that I can make fun of some people without getting IDd.

    Super small world here.

    My Sister(s)-in-law lived in St. Armand, not that far from you. Eastern Townships are very interesting to me. SILs were snobbish about Quebecois (my area is super duper Quebecois not a lot of Anglophones) even though they were francophones. They preferred l’esterie even though everything about it reminds me of New England. Plus there are a shite ton of English speakers.

    Quebec is complicated.

  169. 169.

    munira

    @Ramalama: Very complicated. I have a good friend who lives in Val David and I spent a lot of time at the yoga camp in Val Moran. The Laurentians are definitely quite French compared to the Townships.

  170. 170.

    Elizabelle

    @Ramalama:  Close enough, and thank you for answering.  Got to get up and see that part of the world, sooner rather than later.  Merci.

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