Watch The Independents Halloween Spectacular Tonight at 9 p.m. ET!
Fridays are theme-show nights chez Independents, so tonight's was a no-brainer. I MEAN YES-EAT-BRAINS-ER, amirite?
On Fox Business Network at 9 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. PT (with repeats three and five hours later), you will be treated to:
* Daniel Drezner, author of Theories of International Politics and Zombies, on how various schools of American foreign policy thought are equipped to combat the triple-threat of zombies, Ebola, and ISIS.
* Timothy Sandefur, principal attorney of the Pacific Legal Foundation, on the surprising legal, regulatory, and jurisprudential treatment of haunted houses, psychics, and cannibals.
* Steve Gonzalves, star of the paranormal-investigative reality series Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters Academy, on his elusive search for a wandering spirit.
* Benjamin Radford, Snopes.com contributor and deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, on why claims of the paranormal should be treated with a raised eyebrow or three.
* Party Panelists Michael Malice (n'er-do-well) and Jimmy Failla (comedian) on Halloween urban legends, appropriate/inappropriate costumes, and important Hallow's Eve trivia.
* Kmele Foster losing his shizz in a haunted house (pictured).
No better way to come down after a night of drinking blood than watching your favorite weirdos make merriment and at least some public policy out of Halloween night on the television!
Follow The Independents on Facebook at facebook.com/IndependentsFBN, follow on Twitter @ independentsFBN, and click on this page for more video of past segments.
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"Michael Malice (n'er-do-well) and Jimmy Failla (comedian)"
And the distinction between the two professions is...?
"Watch The Independents Halloween Spectacular Tonight"
Is that an order?
No, but if you don't...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwXai-sgM-s
Too bad if it is. I'm about to head home, take the kids trick or treating, then go to my brothers football game. Happy Halloween everyone!
Aren't you required by law to call it a "Halloween SPOOKtacular"? Call in SWAT. We got lawbreakers ovah heah.
I was about to heap some rare praise on them for not doing that, but I think your method of Swatting the studio is better.
^^This^^ is what I came here to say.
PS This show is still on?
Does anyone actually watch the show? I would think Maddow would have better ratings.
I watch so I can follow along with the jokes in the H&R comment thread.
What ever it takes.
/FBN Head of Programming
Well, I do. So there's one.
I watch it whenever I happen to be home when it comes on.
It can be hit or miss some weeks. I don't like the yelling matches - John Bolton usually starts those.
I actually really like the way they cover international relations, especially the Ukraine stuff.
Fuck, more bad news in private spaceflight
We have to ban space travel now. I mean, if it prevents even one of these dangerous rocket ships from falling on a child, don't we have to do it?
Don't joke about that because you know that's exactly the line of thinking they're (them...progs) formulating in their pea-minds.
I wasn't joking.
http://www.avweb.com/avwebflas.....025-1.html
http://spaceflightnow.com/2014.....st-flight/
It has not been a good week for Private Spaceflight. Between the Antares disaster and now this there are a lot of messes to clean up.
Space is hard.
And on his birthday.
So, is Matt going to be a geeky looking nerd for the show?
I predict that my costume will win raves on this threat at around the 9:57 mark.
threat/thread, whatevs.
Don't make us threaden you, Welch.
Well, I at least finally got you to reply to me, Matt. So when are you going to get that facial hair I've been recommending? (:
He should go total Mugatu.
This sounds awful. Haunted Houses are stupid. Dressing up in costumes is stupid. I want to go to a party tonight but you have to dress up. What do I do?
STAY HOME AND DRINK ALONE AND WATCH THE INDEPENDENTS WITH YOUR GOOD FRIENDS THE FELLOW COMMENTERS DUH.
I had an easy non-dress up idea last night: I'm asymptomatic Ebola patient. I may draw a sketch of Ebola on a white t-shirt so it's clear I have some kind of costume, but otherwise I'm going out tonight in normal duds.
Ride your bike?
Get some fake blood packets, and throw up in all the potted plants.
Don't dress up and go anyway? That's my plan.
Actually, I think I will wear a jacket and tie.
" Kmele Foster losing his shizz in a haunted house (pictured)."
Just say "shit". Geezus. Grow up, Welch!
re: scary things = in Niagara Falls way back in the late 80s, there was an indoor 'amusement park' type place (it was like a mall that had been converted into an entertainment complex); in it was a 'scary maze' type attraction that I'd never seen the like of before or since.
The way it worked was that it was a very-large and complex series of tunnels/rooms/obstacles... all in pitch black. I guess it ran through what were 'service areas' behind much of the other parts of the building. Everything was blacked out entirely, so you wandered around sightless trying to find the way 'out'. Combine claustrophobia with vertigo and you get the idea.
That is all well and good... but there was the added bonus of *people being in there with you* whose entire job was to fuck with you and scare the shit out of you. They'd grab people, whisper in your ear, separate people who were holding hands, etc. I punched one! And he was all canadian 'take it easy, aye'
Every few rooms there would be an 'escape hatch' lit up, and if you wanted to puss out, youd crawl through it and emerge out a hole @ the start and everyone would point and laugh at you because you were a pussytard.
I went through the thing when i was 15, and thought, "Fuck, this place is like one big lawsuit waiting to happen" seriously! It was unbelievable anyone let children go into this thing.
Did that Canuck say 'aye' or 'eh'? If he said 'eh' you should have beaten him to death on the spot.
That sounds about like the best thing ever!
I confess = i groped a girls boobs and blamed it on the employees. She totally knew, though.
Classic Gilmore
"I was young and I needed the booby"
"That sounds about like the best thing ever!"
Yeah, it was. Until i stepped into a void and smacked my head falling and had that thought about 'inevitable lawsuits'.
The place was across the street from a "Ripley's 'Believe it or Not'-Museum" ...freak show type place. Pretty boring except for one thing. at the opening of the 'tour', there was a mirror with a picture next to it of a guy who could fold his tongue completely backward on itself. There was a caption that read, "1 in every 10,000 people has a double-jointed tongue"...
So naturally everyone would then look in the mirror and see how far their tongue would flex.
At the end of the tour, you got to sit in a comfy room with couches and have a beer, and look out the other side of the two-way mirror at idiots wiggling their tongues at themselves.
I liked that.
I look forward to Drezner. His blog @ FP used to be daily reading for me. Then whomever redesigned the site also booted some of the bloggers. CURSE YOU WHOMEVER THAT IS!!
I stopped reading Foreign Policy when it went to a subscription model. Drezner was always a joy to read.
You can still get a lot of their content via RSS feed
though it isn't as comprehensive as it used to be
They used to have every part of the mag separated into different, discrete feeds
Now (since last December) its just one, plus i think another 1 or 2 for their 'Passport' and 'the Cable' blogs.
this thing =
fulltextrssfeed (dot) com
..is helpful for creating full-text feeds out of the 'short blurb' they seem to be sending out now. Although the last 2 days it seems to be broken for whatever reason.
I predict heavily that he will not disappoint!
Will Kennedy go slutty? We hope so.
Will Matt wear a superhero outfit? We hope so.
Will Kmele still be the best dressed? Most likely.
Will Malice once again test our confidence in his supposed heterosexuality? Undoubtedly.
Benjamin Radford, Snopes.com contributor
He's coming on to confirm that TI is actually a TV show and not just some internet trope dreamed up in Gilmore's fevered brain.
This show was so much better when Postrel was host.
We don't disagree.
"when Postrel was host."
Ah, yes. At the old Globe. I remember it well.
Did people lose the directions to this thread?
The race to shit on Branson and his 'space tourism' BEGINS:
"SpaceShipTwo?at least, the version that has the Virgin Galactic livery painted on its tail?is not a Federation starship. It's not a vehicle for the exploration of frontiers. This would be true even if Virgin Galactic did more than barely brush up against the bottom of space. Virgin Galactic is building the world's most expensive roller coaster, the aerospace version of Beluga caviar. It's a thing for rich people to do: pay $250,000 to not feel the weight of the world.
People get rich; they spend money. Sometimes it's vulgar, but it's the system we all seem to accept. When it costs the lives of the workers building that system, we should stop accepting it."
In the comments the author claims that there's no practical use for anything Virgin Galactic is working on for space exploration because it's 'actually just flying an airplane really, really high' and 'that an aircraft-launched rocket plane isn't a viable method for getting to space'.
This guy would be screaming at the Montgolfier brothers for wasting good livestock.
Did you expect anything else from the luddites? You do realize that the words 'progressive' and 'luddite' are not mutually exclusive words today? No, quite to the contrary, those words are very interchangeable. Can these people please just jump off a bridge and clean up the gene pool, today? No evil profits required.
At least he's getting ripped a new one in the comments. If there's one thing that the past forty years of science fiction has done, it's made a lot of people crazy passionate about space flight, profits be damned.
There's an equally opposing force that has made entire generations of people completely ignorant and unimaginative. I think they used to call it welfare.
"Adam Rogers, you can go fuck yourself. You are an asshole. Writing this crap and publishing it before that dead pilot is even buried is like pissing on his grave and spitting at his family. You should be ashamed of yourself."
Yes, he's getting ripped in the comments
Have you read science fiction lately?
Basically you have military sci-fi, you have communistic propaganda. And then urban fantasy.
Sci-Fi is dead, basically.
..."you have communistic propaganda."...
Enviro-panic crap?
There's a reason why I went with the last forty years.
But still, even soft scifi stuff like Star Wars and Firefly are really good at getting largely uninterested people into space flight.
You just have to look harder, it's there.
"People get rich; they spend money. Sometimes it's vulgar, but it's the system we all seem to accept. When it costs the lives of the workers building that system, we should stop accepting it."
Yeah, those poor, poor slaves, FORCED to work on this for the amusement of the rich!
Why, I'll bet some of the rich were watching and shared a chuckle as the craft disintegrated.
Prediction: Broom rides
That's one frightening costume, Matt.
I'm only here to see GILMORE's critique of the costumes.
Umm, where are the costumes? I have a disappoint. I was expected Matt to be Matt, ok. But I wanted Kmele to be a minotaur and Kennedy to be slutty ... anything.
No COSTUMES?!
Why, I never!
Tail end of the show! Worth waiting for!
We don't believe you anymore, Welch. You speak with forked tongue.
Goddammit are ratings that bad? Hurry up (in the pre-taped past I guess), I want to go watch The Thing.
So, who is Dear Leader of PRNK guy?
Ok. You have my undivided attention.
Done handing out poiso...er, candy.
I just forced all of the childins who came to my door to polish my monocle in exchange for their candy. They'll thank me when the Libertaria galactical empire is in full control of things.
Attention all Planets of the Solar Federation, WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL, WE HAVE ASSUME CONTROL, WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL.
Is there a new policy to have a Rush reference in every thread? I am ok with it, just curiosUs.
I mixed Advil with Gummie bears. /crosses fingers.
You forgot the added benadryl and here, take a sip of daddy's beer trick.
I hope Kennedy asks him if there's a war on ghosts or if phantoms are racist.
As long as I never come across Casper...that fucken nerd.
Can the ghosts and zombies vote?
YES!
/The Democrats.
Early and often!
Wow. That's some life. I wake up to the ghost of farts.
He was kind of adorkable.
I get so much mileage out of that word.
It's quite handy.
Wait, I'm here, I made it. You can start the show now.
DERRRBBBZZZZ!!!!!
Hey! Close the door behind you!
Oops, sorry.
*bang*
Ima say crazy.
*someone* just updated their lipstick
Looking at yourself in the mirror is NOT A GHOST, Kennedy.
Self-edit: Not that same as seeing a ghost.
That guy may be discrediting ghosts but he's clearly a lizard person.
But, he's got good hairs.
I wonder what having a cool pad inside the hollow moon is really like?
How long is the awkward conversation with Krazy Kennedy going to continue?
You can't even agree on economic data, you're gonna get consensus with ghosts?
Good luck with that.
...and Dickless here is a Keynesian.
If this is the guy from S.I. (I'm not watching), they're off-ballast to the point that they capsized to port long ago.
It was amusing (for a while) reading Kurtz gripe about corporate ownership of the media as his rag went from mimeographed pulp to four-color slick.
I was going for a Ghostbusters reference.
Wait, the G. I. Ants won the World Series?
I would'a swore they were one reliever shy and then they found a reliever!
Looks like nobody REMEMBERS the underlying skeptical message in Scooby-Doo...
The ghosts were always HUMAN.
And most of them were not guilty of anything worse than trespassing.
Come to think of it...
The weird thing is the oddly specific way these people went around trying to gin up an adverse possession* claim.
*I'm guessing that's what would be in play here.
I've personally experienced what might be considered paranormal activity enough times that I can't totally blow it off. I'm sure it has a scientific explanation, I just don't know what it is. Maybe a bug in the script. I leave it up to you to decide what the script is. Whether it's our own minds or something a lot broader.
Now if you tell me you saw bigfoot, I won't believe you. But if you tell me you saw/witnessed something that you really cannot explain no matter how hard you try? I would believe you.
What about ending up with Bigfoot as a roommate?
I guess Obama wasn't always so lucky.
"But if you tell me you saw/witnessed something that you really cannot explain no matter how hard you try? I would believe you."
If you can't explain something, why would you accept an 'explanation' that it was paranormal?
I wouldn't. I only said that it might be considered paranormal. I would consider it as scientifically explainable. Just that science might not understand it yet. Yes, I said, it, the science IS NOT settled.
Perhaps you live/work in places that have a large amount of low-frequency sound.
I've been sitting here for 20 mins and I have not seen a single frame of Matt or Kmele.
Are they playing ping pong again?
I am they father's spirit
Doomed for a certain time to walk the earth
Till all my sins, done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away!
Booga booga booga
false
the shat
lincoln
shit
Nobody knew the turnip thing?
That's one story I remember from school - though maybe not the turnip part.
You would think playing tricks on the devil would be thought well of in heaven.
Kmele never played D&D
Foster is not Team Jacob.
Jesus Phantom panelists. I knew the answer. Indictment of the American education system?
Oh for fuck sake.
I think there might be a decent business model in making an actual Ghostbusters unit and tricking people like Kennedy into giving you money.
Boy, it must take special type of law mind to specialize in the paranormal.
What happens if, say, an alien - let's call him Alf - lives in your garage when does he legally become yours and can you charge rent? What if you feed him food he doesn't like and he gets sick - or heaven forbid - dies?
So many questions.
That's a common law marriage on Melmac.
Ah, yes, the cannibal case.
blah blah sink your teeth into
I read that case. It was idiotic. And corrupt.
In fact, I believe the cabin boy's name was Richard Parker, homaged in the movie Life of Pi.
Who gets eaten at H&R when the shit goes down?
Ima say Tulpa/Dunphy.
Mmmmm...bacon...
The Independents Attire Review, 31 October 2014
True Spirit of Halloween-Edition
- Kennedy: The 'Biker Bitch'. We reiterate our view that this shirt is sorely lacking either Ramones/Harley Davidson or Metallica World Tour reference. We also think this would have provided an idea opportunity for Kennedy to add some bleached streaks to her hair, wear copious skull-jewelry, and chain-smoke a pack of Capri 120s. We feel she lacks sufficient commitment to the theme.
- Matt: 'PowerMatt', Royal-Blue Edition. We have previously expressed our bullish outlook on Matt's new-tie acquisitions, which we feel will be accretive to his long-term sartorial reputation*.
[*IOW, maybe we will forget the days when Matt's tie choices were a daily source of ridicule]
- Kmele: Maroon - our call for 'bomb-ass' tie-color of the Fall. The tie clip adds a touch of 'extra-slick'. We were looking forward to some more-striking color arrangements from Kmele's 'Autumn-collection', but we can't have everything.
*note: We believe Kennedy's refresh of her blood-red lipstick @ 9:25 was a apropos decision
**note: we express our deepest disappointment that Kennedy was not... more slutty, that Matt failed to be a superhero, and that Kmele didn't have some of those contact lenses from 'Thriller'. I'm going to go throw eggs at children now out of spite.
Gestena
I look forward to your 9:59 update.
if you're not going to do a "full-drag-queen glamour striptease" while singing Gershwin tunes, its going to be a letdown
Update:
You did a good job with Stossell's 'what the heck!?' mannerism. The Stache needed some work. I did not understand the ...shovel? What the hell were you holding?
Yeah the go to prop used to be giant scissors.
Sure about that?
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/i.....AA300_.jpg
I SAID USED TO BE.
Ahh. I see.
I'm still a bit lost on Kennedy-as-panda
The interrupters won't do well in the zombie invasion, Kennedy.
The longer Kennedy is quiet, the more the talk builds up in her brain, and if she doesn't speak for a full minute, her head explodes.
The longer Kennedy is quiet, the more the talk builds up in her brain, and if she remains silent for a full minute, her head explodes.
Just formulating the sentence so it sounds best on the 2 minute hate.
I always get that feeling whenever she fights to not interrupt.
You killed Zombie Kennedy!
She was a zombie?
WRONG. The axis of the undead is zombies, draculas and ghosts.
What a dracula?
Oh, you mean a vampire.
I don't need to know which dracula I am to be a dracula.
He's talking about what liberals say, not do.
Uh, the whole zombie concept is just boring and played out. And completely silly due to the constant need for perpetual motion immortal zombies.
Although this economics video is pretty amusing. Designer shoes? Market price goes down. Combat boots? Market price goes up.
Is this related to the shoe event horizon?
THERE ARE NO SUCH THING AS FAST ZOMBIES.
The speed they attribute to Zombies is a VIRUS. Zombies are slow. Like PROGRESSIVES.
http://youtu.be/lgoJUOoWF-M
Fact. The only good 'fast zombie' movie was 28 Days Later and they weren't zombies, they were living people who were infected with a virus.
And the ending was based on the logical solution: survive until they starve to death.
They were fast in World War Z.
Also infected. Not necessarily the undead.
Ha ha, I bet it will be funny to see the black guy saying "feets don't fail me now!"
Jesus. Christ.
Why is Foster orange?
Lord.
/drops cigarette from lips.
So...
Kmele dies first in the movie?
At least no ferrets jumped out at him.
What the fuck.
Okay, I no longer like Stossel.
Kennedy.
Take it off.
Oh man, Stossel's there? Where's his big dumb sign?
AH! Not Zombie Lou Dobbs!
Aaah, a foreigner took Dobbs' job!
That actually wasn't a bad Stossel impersonation, but who was Foster supposed to be?
Nice Stossel, Matt. But I guarantee you will look better with a goat than Stossel's stache. Yeah, I said it. You should listen to me.
Oh, I get it, Foster was Welch. Terrible.
That ending.
The dancing.
Suddenly I have an idea for a story involving three serial killers.
Matt actually does a fairly amusing Stossell
And The 'Kmele-as-Matt' was instantly identifiable
Kennedy-in-panda-onesie was... a bizarre non-sequitur
Matt's magically-changing tie-color... raises questions
So did everyone end up in Dobbs costumes?
I'm going to pretend Foster was 90's Letterman, so that I don't lose complete respect for him.
Keep up your race baiting, Dems. The Senate is gone, you retards. Where's that permanent forever majority you were just talking about. Yeah, not all Americans are retarded. What a bunch of losers.
Whatever happened to people dressing up as the Wolf-Man or Frankenstein or a Mummy...or a tit?
I am really disappointed they weren't in character for the whole show, with Foster mocking Welch's arguments and Stossel randomly giving people concussions by waving his mounds of paperwork and farming equipment.
Yeah, I don't get it either. It's almost like they should read these comments a little more, from us little people.
The Democrats are having a rough couple of weeks:
Your decisions make Obama mad.
In fairness, this does come in a speech where he's arguing for public pre-schools.* As a result, he may have meant that this isn't a choice women should HAVE to make and that public pre-school would give them more options. However, that phrasing was a bit obtuse.
*Re Public pre-schools: Fuck, why not just hand kids over to state agents at birth and let them be raised by federal employees? Jesus Christ, is no one supposed to raise their kids anymore?
All children should be placed in State Cr?che. It is only way to create New Soviet Man, comrade.
http://youtu.be/1VR3Av9qfZc?t=40s
That's more jobs for everyone! Are you running for office?
So who is more delsional: Nick Gillespie, those 19th Century English Liberals who thought that Liberalism had triumphed and Socialism was no threat or those Germans who thought that there was no way Hitler could actually come to power and if he did he could not create a murderous, aggressive dictatorship?
So who is more *delusional*
I should also add those early 20th Century English Liberals who thought that adopting some socialist policies were nothing to worry about and that Liberalism would not be hijacked by Socialism.
I'm looking forward to Gillespie's next article on how some TV Guide cover from the 1950s is proof that the libertarian moment is happening.
Well, since no one went for it last night, I'll try again tonight.
On Monday, the Supreme Court is having a meeting to consider whether to consider the case that could kill Obamacare (Halbig vs Burwell).
No link tonight, you inappreciative candy-eaters. You had your chance.