Today's Tweet

HILLARY: i told you he'd fuck the chair
TRUMP: *while fucking the chair* I never fucked the chair pic.twitter.com/QACRSry4SG

— michael koh (@ughHugs) October 10, 2016

John Oliver

"...we got a lotta cowards in this country." --Larry Wilkerson

Today's Today

"Let us, in the name of The Holy Trinity, go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."  

--Christopher Columbus

hat tip = @JohnFugelsang (the quote is via Howard Zinn - and it may be apocryphal)

From Indian Country Today:

On the second Monday of October each year, Native Americans cringe at the thought of honoring a man who committed atrocities against Indigenous Peoples.

Columbus Day was conceived by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic Fraternal organization, in the 1930s because they wanted a Catholic hero. After President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the day into law as a federal holiday in 1937, the rest has been history.

In an attempt to further thwart the celebration of this “holiday,” we at ICTMN have outlined eight misnomers and bloody, greedy, sexually perverse and horrendous atrocities committed by Columbus and his men.

As usual, 2 things: 

First, Columbus was a man of his times. Those times could be dispassionately brutal and uncaring, so they produced people who often behaved as compassionless brutes.

Second, we apply a very liberal amount of hagiographic cleanser to the stories, and hey look - a brand new gold-plated sparkling American hero.

I have no problem celebrating all the really great things we want this country to be and to stand for and to characterize for the rest of the world to emulate, but when we learn that the guy who's supposed to embody all that awesomely awesome awesomeness was a complete asshole by every modern standard (standards we claim to hold dear) - we gotta make some changes.

Today's Keith

Watch this video on The Scene.

Debate Recap

No quarter. No mercy. No prisoners. Lay waste, leaving nothing but ash and the tears of impotent rage.

We don't have to like it. It's not fair that we have to do it, but it's our turn.  We are called to make this right again.  This is our time, and so this is our fight.  We rise to the challenge.  We will not be beaten.

Fair Point

To the Republicans saying they want Pence: uhhh, why? No one voted for Pence. He was *picked*. BY THE GUY YOU NOW AGREE HAS SHITTY JUDGMENT.

— Craig Mazin (@clmazin) October 9, 2016

Gotta Get Back To It

Good Harvest

Woodstock

Eating Their Own

And all the usual spinners popped up to deflect and do The Tu Quoque Shuffle.

And then there's Red State.  These guys can be pretty vile when it comes to pimping the "conservative" philosophy of "I've got mine - and all those others would be fine if they'd just stop being so poor or so black or so woman-y, but they refuse to be like us - so fuck 'em".

But at least they have enough self-awareness to know they can't ignore the kind of shit Trump and his minions are flinging regarding Pussygate, and more importantly, they see the impact all the shit-flinging is having on their chances of winning almost any election at any level beyond Board of Supervisors in Pokacuzzin County Alabama.

Red State:

Then there were those whose morals are more flexible, more forgiving if one has the right letter in front of their name. Trump himself released a campaign statement initially calling the conversation “locker room talk.” He added, “I apologize ifanyone was offended.” He did later release a video apologizing and then bringing up Bill Clinton’s sordid history with women.

And here is only a small sample of what avid Trump supporters have been saying in defense of Donald Trump, as if there is any defense, mostly by bringing up Bill Clinton:

Media who dismissed women's charges of RAPE & ASSAULT bc Bill Clinton was the accused have ZERO cred on this. It's all political.

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) October 8, 2016

Lol. So you only want to talk about @realDonaldTrump but not @HillaryClinton and her husband. YOU ARE THE SHILL! https://t.co/YWgQQ12lhG

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) October 8, 2016

--and--

Disgusting, abhorrent, nauseating justifications. Maximum spin. Pushing false narratives. The list goes on.

Let’s get one thing straight. As terrible a person as Bill Clinton is, Bill Clinton is not running for president. Bill Clinton’s name is not on the ballot anywhere. If someone wants to have a conversation about Hillary Clinton’s own personal treatment and degradation of women, let’s have the conversation. That could actually be a fruitful discussion.

But if we are going to fault a woman for simply being married to someone who turned out to be a bad man, we are opening the door to all the judgment the left has been placing on us for years. We are hypocrites, we are misogynists, we are simply holier-than-thou-jerks.

We cannot in good conscience go around touting the sanctity of marriage and the importance of marriage vows, and then turn around and judge a woman for staying in a marriage, for whatever reason. We cannot assign blame to Hillary Clinton for her husband’s indiscretions.

You guys knew what he was when you got in bed with him. Nobody's interested in listening to you bitch about fleas - especially not the fleas on somebody else's dog.

Sometimes, It's Just Too Easy

...but a married white woman?

B-I-N-G-O! https://t.co/wFED5AdMrn

— Tengrain (@Tengrain) October 9, 2016

Today's Tweet

Poor, @realDonaldTrump. Drove the entire Republican Party over a cliff, and nobody likes his LOSER ass, anymore. pic.twitter.com/WRp01tm5s6

— Monkeyfister (@Monkeyfister1) October 8, 2016

Dots They Be Connectin'

Donald Trump enters, and every woman who knows him knows where her hands need to be.

hat tip = @SweetPeaPatsy

Today's Vine

Today's Pix

(click the pic)

The Mythology Of The Trump Voter

"...the only thing poor about them is their judgement."

--and--

"Donald Trump has the impulse control of a grease fire."

I Think It's About Forgiveness, But

The Professional Left with driftglass and Blue Gal

(click the Amazon link, do some shopping and support the little podcast on the prairie)

Oddly, when they're talking about how we forgave the GOP after the 90s, and again after GW Bush, the word "appeasement" came to mind.

Today's GIF

Adapt. Improvise. Overcome.

From 538 Today

Same as always - Don't get happy. Get back to work.

Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball has it about the same, although they haven't shown the same movement in Iowa and Ohio.

And don't forget to follow the money:

Trump campaign is canceling hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising in Fla, NC, OH, possibly other states, per two buying sources.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 7, 2016

Connecting

I have no real idea if DumFux News is trying to fuck up in reverse or what - like if they're doing us a favor by pulling their usual shit, believing lots of people will see their antics through the filter of tacit support for GOP candidates, which accrues to Trump's detriment - which is what they're really up to even tho' they're trying hard to look like they aren't against Trump since Trump is the GOP right now, but this shit will be over at some point and DumFux desperately needs to find a way to maintain their position and what the fuck am I even talking about now?

All the flips and turns and attempted judo shit is just too weird.

We'll see what we see I guess, but when we have almost half of the system acting like they belong in the Day Room lined up waiting for Thorazine, there's just no real way to make sense of it.

Thank the fake lord we still have The Daily Show.

In The Boston Globe

I'm not gonna get my hopes up too much, but this seems like good news - like maybe the Press Poodles are starting to understand a thing or two about how telling us a politician is lying to us (when that politician is fucking lying to us) - like maybe that's part of the media's job after all.  Hmm.

Boston Globe:

The immediate media response to the debate was to grant Mike Pence the victory, largely on style points. Kaine was “trying too hard,” wrote The Washington Post. The same paper’s Chris Cilizza called Pence the winner because he “repeatedly turned to the camera when he answered questions, making clear he understood that the real audience wasn’t in the room but watching on TV. The Indiana governor was calm, cool and collected throughout — a stark contrast to the fast-talking (and seemingly nervous) Kaine.”

Kaine interrupted too much and tried to say too much. Pence was folksy, down-to-earth, and used his previous experience as a radio show host to deftly deflect Kaine’s attack lines.

But there’s one major problem with this analysis: It ignores the fact that when Pence wasn’t misrepresenting the statements of his running mate, he told one lie after another.

--and--

If journalists and pundits have one responsibility to the body politic it is to make clear that when a politician is lying, we call it a lie — not give them credit for lying with style.

Yay

No poodles here 

Samantha Bee