Part of the plan for the new and improved C&L will include an expanded Entertainment section, with reviews and recaps of your favorite shows. Help us make that happen by donating to C&L now.

[WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW]

When last episode (30 Days Without An Accident) ended Patrick was dead from what seemed like some disease and was about to turn into a hungry zombie in the prison while everyone was sleeping. You know tremendous carnage is about to take place. Unfortunately, you also know that when an episode is short on plot development, there's sure to be more plenty of blood and guts to compensate.

The episode opens up with an unknown person feeding the outside zombies with rats. What's that about? Cut to Tyreese, tenderly making out with Karen. After he starts singing "I've got you under my skin," she says she's embarrassed and leaves to let him get some rest. She heads down to where Patrick died. Cue the eerie slasher music. She hears a noise and pulls some curtains back only to find there's nothing there. As she walks towards Cell Block D, zombie Patrick comes to life and starts following her. He strolls along like a typical walker until he turns into a room and hears someone wheezing. (Are they infected too?) He enters and chomps down on a man's neck, blood gushing upwards. Since he didn't try to flee, I'm assuming he was just about dead already from the mysterious illness.

Gross out quotient.

We come back from commercial with Patrick swimming in intestines.

Continue reading »

Best rejection letter ever?

Open thread below....

Mr. Blue Sky
	Price: $0.99 (As of 10/20/13 02:56 pm details)

Electric Light Orchestra is best known as the band that Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne started to sound like The Beatles. Seriously, look it up, their original intention was to pick up where "The Beatles had left off". However, that doesn't disqualify all the great material that the band would put out during its career. It's actually a pretty nifty idea if you think about it: put together a group with a traditional rock arrangement as its basis, then add in classical instrumentation like bowed strings. While this had been done before in music, most of those classical musicians were not permanent members of the bands that they worked with, but rather, hired studio musicians. Although, on this piece, not only are there orchestral instruments, but also synthesizers, most notably a vocoder, which essentially allows for the keyboard player to "sing" through his synth. This particular song was penned by Jeff Lynne at the end of a two-week slump, during which he had a case of writer's block. However, he claims that one day he opened his windows to see the Swiss Alps bathed in sunlight, which inspired him to write "Mr. Blue Sky" along with thirteen more songs for the band's next album.

Know any good orchestral rock songs?

The Ted Cruz Republicans made a horrible mess of everything, and the country and the economy are far worse for the experience, but in spite of all the pain and disgust this caused, there is one clear victor out of all this- and you all know who I mean because everyone else including the Republicans are saying it today: the Democrats won this shutdown showdown. By a country mile in a one mile race.

The amazing thing about all this was how incredibly predictable all this was. I’ve been involved in politics for over 30 years now, in national politics for over 25, and this had the single most predictable outcome of any battle I have ever been a witness to. Several weeks back I was telling my friends that this was definitely going to shutdown, that it would drag on and become merged with the debt ceiling fight, and that it would be settled the 15th or 16th, with the Republicans caving on everything that mattered and being devastated in the polling. For me and other veterans of the Clinton-Gingrich shutdown wars (including a lot of the Republicans involved, who were predicting the same disastrous end), this ending was as obvious as obvious could be.

The Cruz Crazies handed us Democrats this victory, all gift-wrapped and pretty as a picture. We would have had to be political morons to kick it away. But Democrats have had their politically moronic moments at times over the years, and in this case, they did not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. In this case, they held together and stood strong, kept on message and stopped themselves from scurrying off in a dozen different directions. I have never in my long career seen the Democratic party and their progressive allies more fundamentally unified. By showing this kind of unity, they routed the enemy more easily than the US army routed the army of Grenada in the 1980s, and put themselves in a position to do something no one ever thought they would this cycle: to take back control of the US House.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (54)

PLAYS: (668)

Embed

No matter which of the Republican-dominated Sunday shows you opted to subject yourself to, there was a common refrain: no matter how seditiously the Republican Party acted, the problem was the lack of leadership on the part of President Obama.

Of course, on Meet the Press, where no Republican meme is too inane or self-serving to not parrot as conventional wisdom, that was a recurring variation on a theme, brought up over and over again.

While interviewing Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, the intellectually lazy David Gregory uses Ron Fournier's article criticizing President Obama for the shutdown to ask if Obama needs to "absorb" his part of the governing by crisis, as if he's doing this all on his own and it has nothing to do with Republican obstruction.

DAVID GREGORY: Well, to that point, the National Journal has a headline, piece has a headline says, "Obama Wins! Big Whoop. Can He Lead?" Isn't the crisis management that the president decries, isn't that a lasting part of his own legacy here? Doesn't he have to absorb a big part of the responsibility for that?

Right, Dancin' Dave. Ron Fournier (who has NEVER been anything but a spin doctor for the Republican Party and who shrugged off criticism for once telling Karl Rove to "keep up the fight") is worried about Obama's legacy, donchaknow? The overwhelming suicidally stupid tendencies of the tea party-enslaved Congress should not be of concern nor should they worry about their legacy, right?

But bless EJ Dionne, who took up Gregory's promotion of right wing memes later during the roundtable and called it for what it is:

The president, a lot of times, though, when people say the president should lead, what they want him to do is adopt Republican positions and then push for those. That's not leadership, that's capitulation. I think we should stop talking about a grand bargain and try to have normal government in the next two months. Let's just get rid of some of this sequester, which is hurting the economy, and which a lot of Republicans don't like.

That's it in a nutshell. The call for "leadership" by concern trolls like Fournier and Gregory means nothing more than capitulating to the temper tantrums of the Republican Party. And we all know what happens when you give into temper tantrums, right? Unmanageable brats who make everyone miserable.

If it's all the same to Fournier and Gregory and their miserable excuse for journalism, I'll pass. No one will be better off with their version of "leadership".

It's critical for progressives to support progressive voices. Please take some time to support this site.

Tired of the same old Republican talking points and memes? Longing to hear a discussion of the week's events not framed to push the Overton Window to the right? Listen in to Virtually Speaking at 6:00 pm Pacific/9:00 pm Eastern where C&L contributers Dave Johnson & Cliff Schecter offer a counterpoint to the Sunday morning media shows. Jay Ackroyd hosts.

Tonight's subjects:

• The return of the austerity and grand bargain narratives, including the appointment of New Democrats Chris Van Hollen, James Clyburn and Nita Lowey to the budget negotiation committee.
• GOP in disarray. Are the Teahadists chastened, or emboldened by the loss?
• PPACA. Particularly the tension between identifying problems and defending it from attack

Plus satirical commentary from Culture of Truth.

Follow @DCJohnson @CliffSchecter @JayAckroyd @Bobblespeak on Twitter.

Listen live or later at Virtually Speaking at Blog Talk Radio.

DOWNLOADS: (74)

PLAYS: (476)

Embed

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Sunday said that President Barack Obama must cave to House Republicans' demands on immigration reform because he had "undermined" the effort by refusing to defund his signature health care reform law.

During an interview with Fox News, Rubio reasoned that since the Obama administration had delayed parts of the Affordable Care Act, it could also decide to selectively enforce parts of any new immigration reform law.

"Certainly, the president has undermined this effort because the way he's behaved over the last three weeks [during the government shutdown]," he explained to Fox News host Chris Wallace.

But even after House Republicans shut the government down in an attempt to defund the Affordable Care Act and took the country to the brink of default by threatening to raise the debt limit, Rubio argued that those same lawmakers might have the best immigration reform solution.

"This notion that they're going to get into a room and negotiate a deal with the president on immigration is much more difficult for two reasons," he explained. "Number one, because the way the president has behaved towards his opponents over the last three weeks as well as the White House and the things that they've said and done. And number two, because what I have outlined to you... So, I certainly think that immigration reform is a lot harder to achieve today than it was just three weeks ago because of what's happened here."

"Again, I think the House deserves the time and space to have its own ideas on how they want to move forward on this, let's see what they come up with. It could very well be much better than what than the Senate has done so far."

(h/t: Think Progress)

This site is one of the very few that never forgets the continuing sacrifice of our troops in the Middle East. Won't you donate to C&L to let us continue this work?

DOWNLOADS: (21)

PLAYS: (20)

Embed

This Week with George Stephanopoulos notes the deaths of two service members in Afghanistan.

US Army SSG Patrick H Quinn, 26, Quarryville, PA
US Army SGT Lyle D Turnbull, 31, Norfolk, VA

According to iCasualties, the total number of allied service members killed in Afghanistan is now 3,391.

In addition, the following notable names have lost their lives this week:

WWII flying ace Martin Drewes, 94
Performance artist Frank Moore, 67
Race car driver Sean Edwards, 26
Jazz vocalist Gloria Lynne, 83
Character actor Ed Lauter, 74
Television producer Lou Scheimer, 84
Politician/former Speaker of the House Tom Foley, 84
Politician Bill Young, 82
Former First Lady of Yugoslavia Jovanka Broz, 88

DOWNLOADS: (64)

PLAYS: (538)

Embed

First and foremost, let me get out of the way that Gloria Borger is a committed concern troll for the Republican Party in the guise of a "journalist". Moreover, her focus on picking at the various factions in Congress was exactly like the mean girl in high school trying to antagonize a food fight in the cafeteria for her own amusement. Grow the hell up, Borger. You are decades past high school, girlfriend.

That said, it's quite clear that Borger found a barely scabbed-over wound in John McCain's psyche and rubbed it quite raw again, leaving the testy Grampy McCain to grumble over how mean President Obama is:

Responding to President Obama’s assertion that Republican tactics the last three years have undermined the economy, Senator John McCain on Sunday said, “Mr. President, you won.”

Expressing disappointment that “the President felt he had to take a victory lap,” after a deal struck by Senate leaders reopened the government and raised the debt ceiling, McCain said, “Maybe it’s not in [Obama’s] DNA to be magnanimous to opponents.”

And then the bitter old loser had to get some digs in on foreign policy as well. Project much, Bitter McCrankypants?

There was no victory lap in what Obama said after the shutdown was ended; he quite clearly said there were no winners. Maybe it's endemic in the conservative brain to be impervious to evidence in front of you. I know a lot of liberals who took exception to President Obama's calling out of "the lobbyists, and the bloggers, and the talking heads on radio and the professional activists who profit from conflict" without specifying those on the right, making it seem that he was firmly in the "both sides do it" camp.

But never let it be said that conservatives don't know how to feel injured and put upon irrespective of reality.

DOWNLOADS: (65)

PLAYS: (253)

Embed

There are a lot of things that can be said about the rollout of the new healthcare.gov web site and the problems we've seen, but this has to be one of the more ridiculous criticisms that I've heard in a long while. Who knew that Sen. Marco Rubio was a web developer?

Mr. Rubio expressed disappointment in his fellow Republicans for not “uniting” in the fight to defund Obamacare.

He criticized the Affordable Care Act’s rocky start, blaming the Obama administration for hiding the fact that not many Americans are signing up for the health care exchanges because of glitches on the website.

“Setting up a website where people can go online and buy something is not that complicated,” he said. “People do this every day.”

As Jamie explained in his post on some of the problems we're seeing, I don't think it's "everyday" someone is building a web site that has to work behind the scenes with DHS, Social Security, the IRS and other government agencies. With all of the verification required, the site is much more than just a place where "people can go online and buy something," as Rubio described it here. It doesn't excuse the problems, but comparing it to some retail store's web site is just patently ridiculous.

Of course Republicans aren't interested in actually trying to fix any of the problems. They just want to use it as a political cudgel to beat Democrats over the head with.