"Harpy bleats and devil farts" I want to go buy a can of day-glo orange spray paint and (after a generous huff or two) tag that on the side of a rundown railroad bridge in the bad end of town that is , nevertheless, visible from some high rise corner office across the river.
Plopping here that the graffiti on Beach Drive under Military Road have recently been thinly spray painted over, including the ol' chestnut from 2018 or '19 "Time's Up Donnie". I love that the Park Service complied with the edict yet left the message visible-ish.
Almost apropos this post: It's too early into the 26 cycle to stress over bullshit polling made worse by bullshit reporting* so I'm instead just marveling over the polls showing hypothetical, unnamed and unnameable Democrats winning so many races. We've seen this play out often enough that we should know that once the DNC/DCCC make their choices (assuming they care to contest a seat) and the voters see the actual candidates, well, the attraction kind of dies. (*Believe it or not, as a rule I don't wish unemployment on anyone. But I expect within a couple of years that a lot of the reporters who do steno work -- like reporting on polls uncritically, which is the only way the establishment media do it -- will be replaced by an intern or try level putz feeding it into an AI program for a light rewrite. But like the collapse of newspapers, the media will be the last to see what's happening.)
I had to look it up, because god forbid TheHill would tell us in the article, but that district is part of Woodbury County in hyperconservative northwest Iowa.
Really wish I could get excited over this but… an apprentice DINO. BFD.
I’m so old I remember when Biden was elected with a D senate majority. Biggest accomplishment IIRC was the tease of a one year child tax credit. Couldn’t pass a mostly symbolic (because of the Roberts junta) John Lewis act. In four years failed to hold Trump accountable for being a documented national security risk. Speaking of the junta, doing nothing about that existential threat to the nation. You know, sometimes addressing the problem is enough politically even if the problem can’t be resolved.
In four years, he did nothing good that survived the end of his term.
And now I’m supposed to be excited because a DINO got elected and broke a state chamber supermajority?
Our whole problem since Clinton has been our happiness with crumbs. Give us a crumb and we stop fighting.
Eh, when all you have is crumbs, you try to gather them together to fashion a cake, I guess. A Dem victory in a very red district is not a bad sign, even if the Dem is “moderate” (I really don’t know anything about her). If (big “if” I know) her vote can stop the appointment of more fascists to positions of power in Iowa, I’ll take it. And keep pushing politicians to fight smarter.
The correct metaphor is that the crumbs are like drugs that sedate when action’s need. Crumbs also promote the delusion that the national party has an interest in doing better than providing the occasional crumb or, once a generation (if that) a severely compromised thing like the ACA that they then allow to be enshittified to the point of extremely limited benefit.
I really have no idea what this country will look like IF it can manage to shake off Trumpism and move back toward being a republic, but I’m pretty damn sure it’s won’t be going back to the pre-Trump “norm.” And it’s our—every sane person’s—job to force Dem politicians to be better.
Gonna look a lot like the OG Gilded Age when Republicans and their business interests ruled and the Democrats were an alt-Republican party whose big thing was offering more racism (I exaggerate only slightly).
The odds of the Dems getting back into office to have the will and power to treat the Roberts junta as necessary is approximately zero.
Of course, on the state and local levels, things will vary. The national level is fucked for a long time to come.
We were busy enjoying those crumbs when we should have been pressuring the national party to oppose the Republicans and here we are.
Signs and portents are all we have in this magickal age. I'll haul out the dead horse for one more blow: Mom and/or Dad aren't gonna save us and never were, the voters got us into this and only the voters can get us out. A republic, if you can keep it.
When it comes to electoral "messaging", I guess I've become an experimentalist-opportunist. I'm sick to death of "This is all a distraction from the pocketbook issues people really care about", but sometimes it does work - and that seems to have been the approach in this case - and when it works, I'll take it.
Well, "pocketbook issues" are supposedly what got der Führer re-elected, only now the grocery (very interesting word) is still going up and people are getting nervous. I STILL can't shake the feeling even my father is starting to wonder when the Golden Age is supposed to start.
Whichever politician is identified with the Status Quo is gonna get it in the neck, because Status Quo sucks for most people. "Oh, you won? Congratulations, here's a big bucket o' blame to carry into the next election!"
The problem most people have with the Democratic party isn't messaging, its attitude. Waving away military occupation, kidnapping and rendition as unimpotant, data theft as irrelevant, deliberate sabotage of the public's health as a distraction is not a good look, no matter how important that damn kitchen table is to those voters being wooed. The party is hoping the dribbles of "resistance" from blue states will satisfy the bloodlust through 2026 while it gets on with the serious business of searching the couch for loose Republican voters.
Two points do make a straight line, and the winning approach in that Omaha mayors race and in this Iowa election seems to have been "I'm a normal person who cares about normal things." In Omaha, that was expressed as "She cares about potties, I care about potholes."
Maybe that's not the example the Democratic Party needs. I'm sure lots of centrists would love to grab this as The Way to Win and forbid any other approach, but who listens to those losers, anyway? As usual, it's the candidates who need to make the call, and what do I know about Omaha and northwest Iowa? I'm sure not gonna argue with success.
It's true that Republicans have spend 60 years hammering Democrats as wimps who can't stand up to tough guys, whether its Khrushchev or Saddam or the MS-13 members infesting your neighborhood. And a new impression that reinforces an old impression is doubly damaging because its so much more easily accepted.
"Democrats are pushovers for Trump" doesn't even have to be based on anything the Dems do or say, most people already believe they're pushovers generally. National leaders doing all they can to confirm the stereotype makes it a lot worse.
Whatwas her opponent like? Seems that might shed some light on what the situation. If she defeated some MAGAt then at least the red wall is broken. I’ll take that.
Prosch was the owner of a media consulting firm in Sioux City. On his campaign website, Prosch described himself as "a principled, common sense conservative" who "believes in limited government, fiscal responsibility, and the traditional family values that have always been the bedrock of our community."[9] Prosch said his top priority was to eliminate the state income tax. Other priorities listed on his campaign website included "Securing the Border & Ending Illegal Immigration," "Empowering Parents & Prioritizing Education," "and "Protecting the Unborn."
His campaign website is the cleaned-up version, nothing there of his past quotes about abortion being worse than the holocaust, punishing women who get abortions, etc. Seems even the MAGA loons know that shit don't play with the normies.
My ambivalence re what she brings beyond being a not-Republican was her website ie her preferred version of herself.
But Ive moved on. Now I'm wondering how united the D caucus will be so the loss of the supermajority will matter other than in a hypothetical or wishful context.
Obligatory fashion preamble: you continue to crush it with Peoni's ensembles, Roy. Sure, she's overdressed for the venue but she would be, wouldn't she? She probably finds Bolt as attractive as I do, lol.
Yes, if you take the temperature of average Democratic voters, what they want is for their elected officials to be even bigger quislings, to be more supine, to call everything that doesn't lower the price of eggs a "distraction." That's the ticket!
At open-casket funerals, when they start using that widget to close the casket, I bet you’re the wag who stage-whispers „They‘re never gonna get it started that way!…“
I'm being told repeatedly that the Democratic leadership is doing just fine and that I should not complain at all about Jeffries and Schumer. Indeed, no less a person than James Carville has told them that they need to do nothing--to ACTIVELY do nothing because Trump will become unpopular and then Democrats can just slide into office!
Of course, most of the people telling me this are also the people who told me that Merrick Garland was working carefully, thoughtfully, and intently on building the absolute air-tight case against Donald Trump, and that I shouldn't complain that years had gone by with nothing at all from Merrick's office. And that certainly worked out well.
That's not my color, but the dress and overcoat are nice. Classic lines, lovely detail with the beading but not gaudy.
The "average" always reminds me of the old saw - put one hand in a pot of boiling water and the other in a pot of ice water, on average you're comfortable. R's don't try to reach a mythical average voter - they toss red meat and see who goes for it. Then they toss more.
The water isn't freezing - it has some ice in it but is a little warmer than 32, which throws your figures off a bit. Otherwise your pedantry warms my heart.
Ooh, you said "quisling" and I can't help it, kinda OT, but I have to tell you about a movie I watched via Hoopla last night, "Quisling: The Final Days" (2024). It was remarkably moving, the portrayal of a fractured, wicked personality who was of sound mind legally, but who was so demented, and guess what, he kind of reminded me of the orange guy, in certain respects. Anyway it wuz good, sez I.
I don't recall Bolt having such a pair of stones before--glad to see it happen, there's only so much bullshit a man can take. Vox is Fox with one letter changed. VOX: "Even the liberal Received Opinion admits the Dems should be pushing more trans under the bus; it's a big tent but it's an even bigger bus."
When I die, don't expect some John of Gaunt speech about America when I'm gasping on my deathbed. We're the ones getting the sceptering, and the greenness and pleasantness will be long gone. I hope what I can do is rail at the hospice nurses about how glad I am to be leaving a sphere where easily manipulated, banana-spined party bosses fretted about he-shes ooking the centrist voters. And it's 2030 something, and when I when I was a kid 70 years ago making a Christine Jorgensen joke was the mark and seal of an absolute square who was going to move right along to the airline food--so terrible and the portions are so small!
PS: Speaking of prison talk, I'd never actually seen Brute Force (1947, I think), directed by a damn commie named Jules Dassin. It's on the Criterion channel and is a much-watch especially for its rise-like-lions finale. As Billy Bragg sang, there is no substitute for a ball struck squarely and firmly, or for that matter, no substitute seeing the fascist enemy plain. (I mean Hume Cronyn as the insanely sadistic yet fastidious prison captain, who usurps the warden's role. He even listens to Wagner when he's torturing a convict.)
It was nigh-public domain for decades, but the Criterion version, he harrumphed, was given the 4K treatment. When Lancaster is mud-slogging in a tunnel, you see every chunk of the mud! Plus some great Molotov cocktail slinging!
My life has been chaotic recently so maybe I missed it, but I wonder what blackmail material our Bolt has on his bosses, to keep him on the air despite his recently stiffened spine.
Okay, I think I need a back story on how Bolt found his inner Colbert. He lately demolishes the guests and the panel with the wit of someone I can’t quite put my finger on . . . .
As you all know, I'm too pure for this fallen world, so I don't know how to play Cabin Boy. I do, however, know how to play Carnival, which I learned from John Gregory Dunne's True Confessions. ("You sit on my face and I try to guess how much you weigh.")
HRM. I can't help but speculate if the poor image of the Democratic Party re: border "security" and crime just might, and work with me here, miiiiiight have more to do with the concerted propaganda from the Right over the last thirty-plus years calling the Dems weak, ineffectual, and criminal-friendly than anything they've ACTUALLY done. 🤔
Crazy talk, I know. But It Would Be Irresponsible Not To Speculate™.
Look, it's the job of Republicans to make public opinion and it's the job of Democrats to conform themselves to it. I don't make the rules, it's just how our system works.
This morning I got a beg from Heritage, who says they need more money to fight off the tsunami of SOCIALISM!!!, and these are the fucks who have been doing nothing for almost fifty years but turn cash into bullshit. Propaganda is the ONLY reason they exist, which is (partially) why the fascism they're imposing on us is so inept. They lied so much they convinced themselves of their own lies and now they're wondering why reality doesn't match their fantasy.
*Fifty* years. They literally have an entire media ecosystem-propaganda arm devoted to the idea that Watergate Shall Not Fall Again. "More Mush From The Wimp" is forty-five years old.
These (Supposed) Third Way "Democrats" are nothing more than White podcast bros, the national media they go to cocktail parties with, and what's left of the polluted swamp that is James Carville's brain. They issued a "position paper" nine months *after* an election as a form of sabotage. Which is what they're best at.
I STILL think the flailing attempts at impeaching Clinton, Obama, and Biden were nothing but attempted retribution for Watergate. Doesn't matter how, they gotta balance the scales.
Racist, sexist and anti-LGBTQ+. They weren't consulted in the last campaign so they've decided to be Angry White Boys angry at the loss of privilege. Only difference between them and the Repukes is the color of the necktie.
made me think of Kevin McCarthy (not the devil fart, c'mon, man) in the cameo role of *invasion of the body snatchers* (1978) right at the beginning. i think he was a raving derelict staggering between stopped cars in an urban area, pounding on hoods, screaming "They're coming! They're coming!"
You'd think Hakeem and Chuck could get a clue from that.
But isn't it after the truck full of pods crashes on the highway that they finally start to believe him? What's our truckful-of-pods-crash in this case?
i really don't know. nothing seems to be the bottom, just spiraling down day by day, week by week. It might well be that the end of the movie is when Chuck and Hakeem open their mouths, point at the American people "and emit the duplicates' high-pitched scream."
"Harpy bleats and devil farts" I want to go buy a can of day-glo orange spray paint and (after a generous huff or two) tag that on the side of a rundown railroad bridge in the bad end of town that is , nevertheless, visible from some high rise corner office across the river.
And then photograph it and post the photos.
Also good name for the punk band we need.
Plopping here that the graffiti on Beach Drive under Military Road have recently been thinly spray painted over, including the ol' chestnut from 2018 or '19 "Time's Up Donnie". I love that the Park Service complied with the edict yet left the message visible-ish.
Crap. Now I see they've repainted with a roller. I guess Donnie's still got time...
I gave up on spray cans a while ago, life's too short. Whether I'm painting a bicycle or a bookcase, I'm usin' a brush.
It's more personal if you use your tongue
And the lashings are less painful (depending on who's lashing whom).
Did you watch the world turn day-glo?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKaxfc03Fqk
Goddamn, they were so good.
Almost apropos this post: It's too early into the 26 cycle to stress over bullshit polling made worse by bullshit reporting* so I'm instead just marveling over the polls showing hypothetical, unnamed and unnameable Democrats winning so many races. We've seen this play out often enough that we should know that once the DNC/DCCC make their choices (assuming they care to contest a seat) and the voters see the actual candidates, well, the attraction kind of dies. (*Believe it or not, as a rule I don't wish unemployment on anyone. But I expect within a couple of years that a lot of the reporters who do steno work -- like reporting on polls uncritically, which is the only way the establishment media do it -- will be replaced by an intern or try level putz feeding it into an AI program for a light rewrite. But like the collapse of newspapers, the media will be the last to see what's happening.)
DNC did good work last night https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5471284-drey-victory-breaks-gop-majority/
Whoop dee doo!
That was fucking nuts
I had to look it up, because god forbid TheHill would tell us in the article, but that district is part of Woodbury County in hyperconservative northwest Iowa.
Yeah, she had a 10% edge in a district Tubby won by 11% in 2024.
I guess we'll never know how much of a factor "Not Black" was.
Once you're west of the Potomac it's ALL Iowa.
Ironically, Atlantic, Iowa is west of the Potomac.
Really wish I could get excited over this but… an apprentice DINO. BFD.
I’m so old I remember when Biden was elected with a D senate majority. Biggest accomplishment IIRC was the tease of a one year child tax credit. Couldn’t pass a mostly symbolic (because of the Roberts junta) John Lewis act. In four years failed to hold Trump accountable for being a documented national security risk. Speaking of the junta, doing nothing about that existential threat to the nation. You know, sometimes addressing the problem is enough politically even if the problem can’t be resolved.
In four years, he did nothing good that survived the end of his term.
And now I’m supposed to be excited because a DINO got elected and broke a state chamber supermajority?
Our whole problem since Clinton has been our happiness with crumbs. Give us a crumb and we stop fighting.
Sorry, no.
Eh, when all you have is crumbs, you try to gather them together to fashion a cake, I guess. A Dem victory in a very red district is not a bad sign, even if the Dem is “moderate” (I really don’t know anything about her). If (big “if” I know) her vote can stop the appointment of more fascists to positions of power in Iowa, I’ll take it. And keep pushing politicians to fight smarter.
The correct metaphor is that the crumbs are like drugs that sedate when action’s need. Crumbs also promote the delusion that the national party has an interest in doing better than providing the occasional crumb or, once a generation (if that) a severely compromised thing like the ACA that they then allow to be enshittified to the point of extremely limited benefit.
I really have no idea what this country will look like IF it can manage to shake off Trumpism and move back toward being a republic, but I’m pretty damn sure it’s won’t be going back to the pre-Trump “norm.” And it’s our—every sane person’s—job to force Dem politicians to be better.
Gonna look a lot like the OG Gilded Age when Republicans and their business interests ruled and the Democrats were an alt-Republican party whose big thing was offering more racism (I exaggerate only slightly).
The odds of the Dems getting back into office to have the will and power to treat the Roberts junta as necessary is approximately zero.
Of course, on the state and local levels, things will vary. The national level is fucked for a long time to come.
We were busy enjoying those crumbs when we should have been pressuring the national party to oppose the Republicans and here we are.
Not everybody is ready for Zohran Mamdani.
Signs and portents are all we have in this magickal age. I'll haul out the dead horse for one more blow: Mom and/or Dad aren't gonna save us and never were, the voters got us into this and only the voters can get us out. A republic, if you can keep it.
When it comes to electoral "messaging", I guess I've become an experimentalist-opportunist. I'm sick to death of "This is all a distraction from the pocketbook issues people really care about", but sometimes it does work - and that seems to have been the approach in this case - and when it works, I'll take it.
Well, "pocketbook issues" are supposedly what got der Führer re-elected, only now the grocery (very interesting word) is still going up and people are getting nervous. I STILL can't shake the feeling even my father is starting to wonder when the Golden Age is supposed to start.
Whichever politician is identified with the Status Quo is gonna get it in the neck, because Status Quo sucks for most people. "Oh, you won? Congratulations, here's a big bucket o' blame to carry into the next election!"
The problem most people have with the Democratic party isn't messaging, its attitude. Waving away military occupation, kidnapping and rendition as unimpotant, data theft as irrelevant, deliberate sabotage of the public's health as a distraction is not a good look, no matter how important that damn kitchen table is to those voters being wooed. The party is hoping the dribbles of "resistance" from blue states will satisfy the bloodlust through 2026 while it gets on with the serious business of searching the couch for loose Republican voters.
Two points do make a straight line, and the winning approach in that Omaha mayors race and in this Iowa election seems to have been "I'm a normal person who cares about normal things." In Omaha, that was expressed as "She cares about potties, I care about potholes."
Maybe that's not the example the Democratic Party needs. I'm sure lots of centrists would love to grab this as The Way to Win and forbid any other approach, but who listens to those losers, anyway? As usual, it's the candidates who need to make the call, and what do I know about Omaha and northwest Iowa? I'm sure not gonna argue with success.
It's true that Republicans have spend 60 years hammering Democrats as wimps who can't stand up to tough guys, whether its Khrushchev or Saddam or the MS-13 members infesting your neighborhood. And a new impression that reinforces an old impression is doubly damaging because its so much more easily accepted.
"Democrats are pushovers for Trump" doesn't even have to be based on anything the Dems do or say, most people already believe they're pushovers generally. National leaders doing all they can to confirm the stereotype makes it a lot worse.
Whatwas her opponent like? Seems that might shed some light on what the situation. If she defeated some MAGAt then at least the red wall is broken. I’ll take that.
Her opponent was a MAGAt
Prosch was the owner of a media consulting firm in Sioux City. On his campaign website, Prosch described himself as "a principled, common sense conservative" who "believes in limited government, fiscal responsibility, and the traditional family values that have always been the bedrock of our community."[9] Prosch said his top priority was to eliminate the state income tax. Other priorities listed on his campaign website included "Securing the Border & Ending Illegal Immigration," "Empowering Parents & Prioritizing Education," "and "Protecting the Unborn."
His campaign website is the cleaned-up version, nothing there of his past quotes about abortion being worse than the holocaust, punishing women who get abortions, etc. Seems even the MAGA loons know that shit don't play with the normies.
Looks like MAGA was sufficiently repellant in that district...
So how did he lose?
OTOH, her platform didn't look all that much different.
My ambivalence re what she brings beyond being a not-Republican was her website ie her preferred version of herself.
But Ive moved on. Now I'm wondering how united the D caucus will be so the loss of the supermajority will matter other than in a hypothetical or wishful context.
Obligatory fashion preamble: you continue to crush it with Peoni's ensembles, Roy. Sure, she's overdressed for the venue but she would be, wouldn't she? She probably finds Bolt as attractive as I do, lol.
Yes, if you take the temperature of average Democratic voters, what they want is for their elected officials to be even bigger quislings, to be more supine, to call everything that doesn't lower the price of eggs a "distraction." That's the ticket!
"I do, lol"
You must be fun at weddings!
I'm even more fun at funerals.
Dust to dust, LOL!!
Or do you, like Scobie, drive the big needle into the arm just to be certain?
Mad props for the CHARADE reference!
REBID – Where all the women are strong, the props are mad, and the snark is above average!
At open-casket funerals, when they start using that widget to close the casket, I bet you’re the wag who stage-whispers „They‘re never gonna get it started that way!…“
I'm being told repeatedly that the Democratic leadership is doing just fine and that I should not complain at all about Jeffries and Schumer. Indeed, no less a person than James Carville has told them that they need to do nothing--to ACTIVELY do nothing because Trump will become unpopular and then Democrats can just slide into office!
Of course, most of the people telling me this are also the people who told me that Merrick Garland was working carefully, thoughtfully, and intently on building the absolute air-tight case against Donald Trump, and that I shouldn't complain that years had gone by with nothing at all from Merrick's office. And that certainly worked out well.
There ain't "no less a person than James Carville"...
That bald-headed poot should be sitting on a fucking porch somewhere, whittling and twinkling and giving folksy advice to lost travellers.
Cracker Barrel should put him on their signs now that the company has capitulated to the Rightwing noise machine.
Having that wizened goblin in their logo would surely help marketing!
Wizened but somehow not wise.
I misread that as "twinking". Changes the tone a bit.
Maybe Mary Matalin, after all she married him
There's no accounting for true romance these days...
Peoni's get-up is awful, but exactly what I imagine Pegs loves, especially if she's drunk shopping. Which she is.
100%
That's not my color, but the dress and overcoat are nice. Classic lines, lovely detail with the beading but not gaudy.
The "average" always reminds me of the old saw - put one hand in a pot of boiling water and the other in a pot of ice water, on average you're comfortable. R's don't try to reach a mythical average voter - they toss red meat and see who goes for it. Then they toss more.
put one hand in a pot of boiling water and the other in a pot of ice water, on average you're comfortable.
not really. Boiling water is ~212 F and Freezing water is 32 F. The average for that is 122 F, which is a very hot day in Phoenix
But it's a dry heat, therefor...uhmm...
The water isn't freezing - it has some ice in it but is a little warmer than 32, which throws your figures off a bit. Otherwise your pedantry warms my heart.
Ooh, you said "quisling" and I can't help it, kinda OT, but I have to tell you about a movie I watched via Hoopla last night, "Quisling: The Final Days" (2024). It was remarkably moving, the portrayal of a fractured, wicked personality who was of sound mind legally, but who was so demented, and guess what, he kind of reminded me of the orange guy, in certain respects. Anyway it wuz good, sez I.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quisling:_The_Final_Days
How does it end? I'll watch movies about Nazis if it ends with them putting a bullet through their head.
SPOILER ALERT:
Firing squad first, aimed at the chest, then the coup de grâce to the noggin.
So a happy ending, then.
From what I saw of that dress, she's got a part as a walk-on in an episode of Star Trek after she's done with Bolt.
Also it took fucking FOREVER for the clothing site to load.
"How about you, Peoni? You feeling gender-fluid? We can play Cabin Boy."
You dog (says Peoni).
And is it possible she could say "2 marks"?
Jean Smart IS Peoni Doyenne!
I don't recall Bolt having such a pair of stones before--glad to see it happen, there's only so much bullshit a man can take. Vox is Fox with one letter changed. VOX: "Even the liberal Received Opinion admits the Dems should be pushing more trans under the bus; it's a big tent but it's an even bigger bus."
When I die, don't expect some John of Gaunt speech about America when I'm gasping on my deathbed. We're the ones getting the sceptering, and the greenness and pleasantness will be long gone. I hope what I can do is rail at the hospice nurses about how glad I am to be leaving a sphere where easily manipulated, banana-spined party bosses fretted about he-shes ooking the centrist voters. And it's 2030 something, and when I when I was a kid 70 years ago making a Christine Jorgensen joke was the mark and seal of an absolute square who was going to move right along to the airline food--so terrible and the portions are so small!
Jean Smart is perfect casting.
Alt. busverse (from the olden days):
As you can easily hear
Got this baby wound up to 4th gear
As the wheels start to whine
Just look for the sign
“Insert Twice-Impeached President Here”
Hey, Jean Smart libelz! Pfaugh!
Gotta say I’m here for Bolt’s new take-no-prisoners interview style. And does that MIDI dress come with a DX-7?
No DX7, but it has thousands of sound patches.
On floppy disks!
On floppy disks!
Is this the start of a think piece about the evolution of technology?
Think twice!
PS: Speaking of prison talk, I'd never actually seen Brute Force (1947, I think), directed by a damn commie named Jules Dassin. It's on the Criterion channel and is a much-watch especially for its rise-like-lions finale. As Billy Bragg sang, there is no substitute for a ball struck squarely and firmly, or for that matter, no substitute seeing the fascist enemy plain. (I mean Hume Cronyn as the insanely sadistic yet fastidious prison captain, who usurps the warden's role. He even listens to Wagner when he's torturing a convict.)
Saw that on Criterion too. Mister, we could use a man like Julie Dassin again!
https://archive.org/details/bruteforce1947_202003
Have not watched; cannot vouch...
It was nigh-public domain for decades, but the Criterion version, he harrumphed, was given the 4K treatment. When Lancaster is mud-slogging in a tunnel, you see every chunk of the mud! Plus some great Molotov cocktail slinging!
These are precisely the sorts of edifications we've come to expect from a member of the Critics' Pantheon.
As Billy Bragg sang, "How can you lie there and think of England, when you don't even know who's in the team?"
Thought that was Yogi...
After that I need a cigarette, and I don’t even smoke.
My life has been chaotic recently so maybe I missed it, but I wonder what blackmail material our Bolt has on his bosses, to keep him on the air despite his recently stiffened spine.
Long term contract. Good reps.
One-eyed man, land of the blind, yadayada. Bolt unbound feels right, given a guy like that.
Okay, I think I need a back story on how Bolt found his inner Colbert. He lately demolishes the guests and the panel with the wit of someone I can’t quite put my finger on . . . .
It's me your thinking of. or else it's the author of Morgue for Whores
As you all know, I'm too pure for this fallen world, so I don't know how to play Cabin Boy. I do, however, know how to play Carnival, which I learned from John Gregory Dunne's True Confessions. ("You sit on my face and I try to guess how much you weigh.")
I put the DVD into my new PS5 and press the play button
In the words of the great James Walcott, Bolt Upright is "... fed up, cheesed off, and ready to bring the funk." I like it.
HRM. I can't help but speculate if the poor image of the Democratic Party re: border "security" and crime just might, and work with me here, miiiiiight have more to do with the concerted propaganda from the Right over the last thirty-plus years calling the Dems weak, ineffectual, and criminal-friendly than anything they've ACTUALLY done. 🤔
Crazy talk, I know. But It Would Be Irresponsible Not To Speculate™.
Look, it's the job of Republicans to make public opinion and it's the job of Democrats to conform themselves to it. I don't make the rules, it's just how our system works.
This morning I got a beg from Heritage, who says they need more money to fight off the tsunami of SOCIALISM!!!, and these are the fucks who have been doing nothing for almost fifty years but turn cash into bullshit. Propaganda is the ONLY reason they exist, which is (partially) why the fascism they're imposing on us is so inept. They lied so much they convinced themselves of their own lies and now they're wondering why reality doesn't match their fantasy.
Tsunami of Socialism is my favorite water-park ride.
“Step up and slide, noble citizens! You have nothing to lose but your swimsuits!”
Tsunami Of Socialism > Firehose Of Fascism
The literal Tsunami of Socialism would look something like public waterworks that provide abundant clean water to every person.
And a wave pool for the surfers.
*Fifty* years. They literally have an entire media ecosystem-propaganda arm devoted to the idea that Watergate Shall Not Fall Again. "More Mush From The Wimp" is forty-five years old.
These (Supposed) Third Way "Democrats" are nothing more than White podcast bros, the national media they go to cocktail parties with, and what's left of the polluted swamp that is James Carville's brain. They issued a "position paper" nine months *after* an election as a form of sabotage. Which is what they're best at.
I STILL think the flailing attempts at impeaching Clinton, Obama, and Biden were nothing but attempted retribution for Watergate. Doesn't matter how, they gotta balance the scales.
This Third Way shit is all reactionary. I take it as the fever that shows the vaccine is working.
Racist, sexist and anti-LGBTQ+. They weren't consulted in the last campaign so they've decided to be Angry White Boys angry at the loss of privilege. Only difference between them and the Repukes is the color of the necktie.
Also, 3rd Way has been getting usurped in the attention department by No Labels
This seems like a version of "Which brand of bottled water do you prefer?"
Huh. I thought no labels was what the fedcops and the militiaboyz are wearin' now.
also, the Repubs decided to vote against the bipartisan Border bill leading up to the election; just as Trump requested
A thousand dollars for a clip of ANY elected Democrat or Democratic candidate for office ever saying "microagressions."
Make it one MILLION dollars and I'll get AI to come up with something.
Good enough to fool Chris Cuomo!
He'll be first in line to interview A.I. Carville Democrat.
Jim Acosta beat him to that:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/04/jim-acosta-parkland-shooting-victim-ai-interview
But imagine the possibilities!
"Isn't it true, Congresswoman, that you HATE AMERICA?"
""Yes! Yes! It's all true! Burn the flag! Spit on the veterans!" says AI AOC
Like so many others in today's modern world, a newsman's gotta work to not get left behind in the AI arms race.
Can you get that bar up to at least ground level
made me think of Kevin McCarthy (not the devil fart, c'mon, man) in the cameo role of *invasion of the body snatchers* (1978) right at the beginning. i think he was a raving derelict staggering between stopped cars in an urban area, pounding on hoods, screaming "They're coming! They're coming!"
You'd think Hakeem and Chuck could get a clue from that.
But isn't it after the truck full of pods crashes on the highway that they finally start to believe him? What's our truckful-of-pods-crash in this case?
i really don't know. nothing seems to be the bottom, just spiraling down day by day, week by week. It might well be that the end of the movie is when Chuck and Hakeem open their mouths, point at the American people "and emit the duplicates' high-pitched scream."
Received Opinion and the Week in Stupid over at Tiedrich's place, are my two current mainstays in these troubled times.