Bernie's Job Interview, Lessons From the Panama Papers, and Racial Disparities in Cop Violence: The Fifth Column Podcast Returns

Matt Welch, Kmele Foster and Michael Moynihan argue about the meaning and value of "democracy"

Didn't get enough last week of The Fifth Column, the new politics & argument podcast featuring Kmele Foster, Michael C. Moynihan et moi? You're in luck! As always, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or listen to it right here:

Among the topics of Episode Two: Was Bernie Sanders' Daily News interview really all that bad? Should we be rooting for undemocratic results in the presidential election? What are the policy lessons from the Panama Papers? And why is Kmele mad yet again about an article showing unarmed black people get shot and killed disproportionately by the cops? And there will be the usual jackassery and digression, along with a choice version of "Some Idiot Wrote This." Subscribe today!

Comments

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Podcast. Nice. something I can listen to at work.

[The Last American Hero]

Smoking a cigar made of $100 bills while watching the orphans work your coal mines isn't work.

[Square = Circle]

He said *at work*, not *while working.*

*Someone* needs to provide the orphans with second-hand cigar smoke, given that they don't get breaks.

[jarflax]

He has to point at the cutter and lighter and raise an eyebrow to even get the cigar lit! How much work do you expect!

[Intraveneous Woodchipper]

Don't forget the monocle-polishers!

[Crusty Juggler]

The podcast is an excellent idea.

[commodious spittoon]

Podcast. Nice. something I can listen to at work.

If you're not already acquainted, you're welcome. Even his free stuff is stellar.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Huh, Moynihan has some comedy chops. Better step it up, Welch.

[Matt Welch]

Oh, he's much funnier than I'll ever be!

[coloraDOOM]

What is this, sarcasm?

[Matt Welch]

Oh God no. Moynihan is the life of any party, always has been.

[__Warren__]

Democracy only has a negative value.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Moynihan makes an excellent point. We give Trump a huge amount of guff for this stuff, and we should, but Sanders is a sitting Senator and has been deeply involved in this stuff. Sanders claiming he doesn't know anything about this financialy-regulationey stuff (that's been called 'refresheing' when he said he "doesn't know") is a problem. Not knowing IS a problem when you've been at the levers of power for years before you ran for president.

[Pay up, Palin's Buttplug!]

He probably doesn't know much about the VA either?

[HeteroPatriarch]

I thought from the headlines that this was another Links thread.

[Annini]

http://goo.gl/bPOBuL the best dating site for adults meeting.

[Notorious UGCC]

No, second-best.

The *best* is yo mama's bedroom.

[HeteroPatriarch]

I don't think you can call what happens in there "dating."

[commodious spittoon]

I went on a date last night. We were dating all night long.

[Notorious UGCC]

Royal "we"?

[Intraveneous Woodchipper]

Fap fap fap fap

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Moynihan bringing the voice impressions!

Oh, FYI, if you guys are going to do an entire podcast in Blackcent, Kmele has to go first.

[Crusty Juggler]

Yeah...

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

"What Star Wars gets wrong about Space Blacks and Space Women"

comedy gold.

[commodious spittoon]

Okay, sure, we'd have to pay $1600+ for our smartphones, but just think of how much more money would be sluicing around the economic aquifers if we're producing all those phones here in America. It would pay for itself, because once government isn't paying unemployment, that money is freed up for productive uses.

I mean, I'm sure that's how it works. No way they'd just channel it into new avenues of wealth destruction, right?

[Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer]

Happy week-end everybody!

[commodious spittoon]

Hello.

[Trshmnstr, terror of the trash]

Happy weekend Rufus!
Happy weekend movie house!
Happy weekend Emporium!
Happy weekend you wonderful old Hit & Run!

[Crusty Juggler]

Theory: Moynihan's disgust for Julian Assange is triggered by Assange's impressive vampiric pallor.

[commodious spittoon]

Making pupusas for his friends

That's El Salvador, not Ecuador! JACKASS.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

He did say Assange resembled a Bond villain.

And commodious below, it was still funny, I don't care whose culture got offended.

[Crusty Juggler]

A really pathetic Bond villain from the Timothy Dalton years.

I enjoyed the entire podcast. They were all entertaining, interesting, and funny.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Absolutely. The subject matter was great, the crosstalk was interesting and funny, and Moynihan's impersonations were pretty damned good. I'm putting this on my favorites.

[commodious spittoon]

Actually, I had to Google whether it's authentic or isolated to El Salvador. Surprisingly enough it seems to be.

[Cytotoxic]

OT: 10 Cloverfield Lane is pretty good. Not exactly a 'pleasant' viewing experience but the performances and denoumant were solid. The 'link' the Cloverfield is just...don't even consider it.

[commodious spittoon]

That's the one what with the abducted woman and the fallout shelter, yeah?

[Cytotoxic]

More or less.

[RBS]

Does John Goodman jump off the waterfall at Casa Bonita at the end?

[Mint Berry Crunch]

Yes, but only after going through Black Bart's Cave.

[Cytotoxic]

I saw the Rogue One trailer. Not good. I liked TFA strong woman lead, don't need another. Nor do we need more British accents. There is a distinct lack of 'Abrams' in the 'who made this thing' Wikipedia entry for R1 and I think that is the source of any problems.

[Mint Berry Crunch]

There is a distinct lack of 'Abrams' in the 'who made this thing' Wikipedia entry for R1 and I think that is the source of any problems.

Insert lens flare joke!

[Cytotoxic]

Yeah that was also shitty: no lens flare the entire trailer.

[Brochettaward]

Wait, you are saying the issue is that Abrams isn't involved on Rogue One? You lost me.

But on to the main point - I find myself adopting positions I never cared about before in recent years. I wouldn't have given a fuck about a main female lead in a movie, but I have now actively come to resent it because it's forced. It's like the word rape. There's so much dishonesty and watering down of the word, that I just laugh when it is brought up most of the time in the news. Progs are good at accomplishing the exact opposite of their stated intentions at all times.

[Cytotoxic]

Lost you? It's very simple: Abrams tends to make good movies like 10 Cloverfield Lane. He made Star Trek watchable. He resuscitated Star Wars.

I don't mind the female lead but they're all Katniss! Stop making them Katniss clones!

[Brochettaward]

Abrams is the definition of safe mediocrity. If you want simple and somewhat 'watchable,' he's OK. If you want a genuinely good movie, well, you are shit out of luck.

[Cytotoxic]

Cloverfield 10 Lane is genuinely good. You love your hate, but that doesn't make it right.

[Brochettaward]

Haven't seen it. Doesn't change the issues with all of his other movies. Cardboard characters. An inability to set a scene and let it play out. He reverses the formula and his narration scenes are just there to get you from one CGI scene to the next. The writing nearly always lacks subtlety of any kind like TFA where we are told what motivates a character or what is happening between two of them instead of actually showing it. So, five minutes of interaction between the female and Han Solo is enough for a mother/daughter relationship to form and to go for the payoff. Which creates the obvious problem - none of the big dramatic payoffs his movies go for work or have earned them in the slightest because of his frantic writing style. All of that before we even get to the inconsistencies that often appear in the plot and his complete lack of originality.

[Cytotoxic]

"The writing nearly always lacks subtlety of any kind like TFA where we are told what motivates a character or what is happening between two of them instead of actually showing it. "

Maybe you should have watched the movie with your eyes open. And your ears too.

[Brochettaward]

Hey. Kylo Ren is conflicted. How do I know he's conflicted? Not because of any actions he takes involving the plot or the actor showing it to the audience, but because there was on one scene where Kylo said he was conflicted to the audience. It never showed up in any of his interactions with other characters to include when he kills his father. Why don't you just admit you are some Star Wars fan who is willing to accept palpable shit because it wasn't a boring train wreck like the prequels?

What's even funnier is fans talking about how they like this or that character when they were on the screen for all of a few minutes in total. I mean, Captain Phasma spoke about four lines in the movie and was massively incompetent, but that sure is a snazzy costume! How progressive to have a female in androgynous armor.

[jarflax]

Why do we use the word conflicted to mean 'is a whiny brat'? Ren is teen Vader all over again. We know he is unhappy because he whines a lot and commits inexplicable atrocities, but if you want a compelling villain angst is a weak motivation. Grown up Vader was an evil mystical knight following the precepts of his ancient religion by trying to impose his Ubermensch will upon the universe. Teen Vader and Ren are angsty idiots destroying things because reasons.

It's the difference between Stalin or Hitler and Kim Jong Un.

[jarflax]

Possibly Brochettaward got lost in the 3 poorly justified plotlines Abrams always rolls in with his main plot to make sure he never falls into stale concepts like a clear dramatic progression.

[Brochettaward]

The film lost me in the first five minutes when its new villain who can read minds incompetently killed the old man who knew where the droid was, and then proceeded to take the rebel pilot back onto the ship to torture him for a full day before deciding to, you know, read his mind.

But Abrams is just next level or something apparently. I missed the brilliance of all this.

[Cytotoxic]

"It never showed up in any of his interactions with other characters to include when he kills his father."

It showed up perfectly well when he killed his father. Again: watch the movie with your eyes open.

[A Very Tulpa Christmas]

I saw one of the Hunger Games movies recently and was actually impressed and surprised at Katniss' depth. She wasn't just some supernaturally strong female lead for the sake of 'girl power.' She actually made some really foolish and selfish?but comprehensibly so and relatable?decisions. She acted largely emotionally, which is what I like in characters, especially female characters, and I hate to see emotional qualities so often erased or diminished in order to further some vague spontaneously concerted purpose of overturning gender stereotypes.

Give me Geena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence. Give me Liv Ullman and Giulietta Masina. Hell, give me every classic Disney princess character that receives so much scorn of late. I love those characters.

[You Sound Like a Prog (MJG)]

Yet if all these movies starred guys, you probably wouldn't notice it, right?

I think it is strange that both protagonists look very similar, though again, a hunky young white guy with a crew cut probably wouldn't raise the same suspicions. The characters do appear to be quite different, and while I'm skeptical of the whole Rogue One premise (we've seen 3 Death Stars get blown up now; why do I care about the plans for the first one?), that trailer got me interested.

But she has to die at the end. All of them should probably die, but if she's got Solo's basic arc of rogue embracing a cause, she needs to die like Solo should have.

[Brochettaward]

No. Nor would have given too much thought to a female lead before. Because there were female leads. And I object to plenty of female leads. Usually because the actor sucks like in Man of Steel.

The point isn't that my complaint is wholly rational. It's that it borders on propaganda at this point. it's diversity for diversity's sake and it's stupid. And I'm tired of hearing how females are 'strong as hell.' By what fucking metric? Maybe there's a reason action movies typically focused males in the past.

[Brochettaward]

Even history isn't safe from the hackery. I have to try to watch Vikings without noticing the moronic feminist rewrite of the history and people involved. Yea, a lot of it is bullshit. Doesn't mean we need made-up female warriors all over the place because some cunt writer on the team probably Googled it and saw the bastardized second-hand research floating about on female warriors.

[Brochettaward]

How the hell did Reason get through an entire thread about exploding watermelons without a single Gallagher reference? It's like no one around here is even trying anymore.

[Quincy.]

We do hydraulic press videos now.

[commodious spittoon]

These euphemisms...

[Quincy.]

I liked you're rant about the thermodynamic impossibilities of The Matrix the other night. Do Snowpiercer.

[Quincy.]

your rant

[commodious spittoon]

Snowpiercer. Christ, where do I start with this film. Well, seeing it would be a start. Um, to be continued...

[Quincy.]

A primer:

1) Why is the train still circling the globe 18 years after the climate disaster? A year or two I could accept: It's how you escape the mob of starving, freezing humanity looking for it's last chance.

2)Why is the train still circling the globe 18 years after the climate disaster? As seen in the film, it runs the risk of a snow induced derailment pretty frequently.

3)Why not stop the train near one of the ruined cities it passes by so scenically, raid the place for machine tools, use the energy you are pissing away pointlessly circling the globe instead for precious heat, and rebuild fucking civilization.

4) If you did that, you might have the back section of the train having something to do other than bitching about having to eat cockroach bars and bitching about having their children stolen to replace worn out train parts. Maybe they won't periodically burst in open revolt over it.

5) Children don't make good locomotive replacement parts. This is science.

[PapayaSF]

Yes, Snowpiercer is nonsense, energy- or economy-wise.

What was the rant about the Matrix? Note that in the original script, (SPOILER ALERT!) the people in tubes were providing brainpower, not electricity, to power the Matrix. The producers forced the change, because they didn't think audiences would understand. (An amazingly stupid opinion.) Once I learned that, my biggest objection to the movie went away.

[Cytotoxic]

There are many other reasons The Matrix is stupid.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

I'm not going back to the thread, but I believe someone did make a Gallagher reference.

[Cytotoxic]

I haven't been paying much attention to this place lately. Anything interesting?

[DenverJ]

We were discussing annexing Canada. Thoughts?

[Cytotoxic]

Meh.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Hx left out the important part: ...and selling it back to Quebec.

[Cytotoxic]

NO NO NO

[Cytotoxic]

Initially, I had hoped Cruz would knock Trump right out of the race. Now I want a convention for one simple reason: so the GOP can nominate someone else entirely ie someone electable. Ryan is an asshole who voted for TARP. He's also likely a strong bet against Clinton. Sanford would be better. I don't think anyone can top Sanford.

[commodious spittoon]

Ace of AoSHQ is tossing Tom Cotton's name into the ring. He's a jackass on domestic surveillance, but that's all I know about him. Ace seems bullish.

[Cytotoxic]

Fuck that jerk. He's also the ULTRAHAWK cartoon/strawman that Ron Paul fights with but made real.

[commodious spittoon]

Or maybe it's encryption. Probably both. He's an Iraq war vet, so probably both.

[DenverJ]

Lamont?

[Cytotoxic]

Who?

[DenverJ]

Sanford's son.

[DenverJ]

http://m.memegen.com/8zcdix.jpg

[commodious spittoon]

Mumford?

[Notorious UGCC]

Isn't Sanford the guy who "hiked the Appalachian trail," if you know what I mean?

[Cytotoxic]

Yes. That's part of his charm. He's like GOP Bill Clinton. Hillary can't beat that.

[Notorious UGCC]

She probably beats it all the time.

[american socialist]

Hi,

I like the new show. On the next episode can you discuss why the liberal Clinton-era crime bill was opposed by so many liberals? You might also want to discuss that the reason Republicans voted against it was because it wasn't tough enough on marijuana peddlers. And that in addition to that shortcoming, it gave a few too many peanuts to the working poor at the expense of investment bankers, who-- 14 years later-- would be pleading with Bernie Sanders to please, please, please bail them out because they just blew their wad.

That might make a good podcast.

[DenverJ]

Was they're one word of that paragraph that was true?

[Quincy.]

Hi,

Maybe.

[american socialist]

Let's see... Ron dellums, Peter defazio, Maxine waters voted against the bill. I'll name you 30 prominent liberals who voted no.

[B. Woodrow Chippenhaus]

And they'd be well outnumbered by Democrats who voted for it.

Senate vote

Yes votes: Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Chris Dodd, Joe Lieberman, Tom Harkin, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Max Baucus, Harry Reid, Tom Daschle, Robert Byrd, Jay Rockefeller

That's just the most prominent Democrats in the Senate. Here's the House vote:

House vote

[Intraveneous Woodchipper]

Damn, amsoc just got "pwned" as the kids say. What a "no0b"!

[Warty]

Or maybe they could discuss how the enemies of the working class will get what they deserve soon, right, comrade?

[Raven Nation]

Speaking of class enemies, I've noticed on some of my proggie friends FB feeds, Bill Clinton being denounced as not a true liberal. Not now, not ever. He's "always" apparently, been a fraud. So, Trotsky to Bernie's Stalin?

[PapayaSF]

Basically.

[commodious spittoon]

The great thing about being an avowed socialist in a liberal democracy? Getting to claim triumph a solid 40% of the time, and never, ever having to admit to your terrible failures. Which is why amsoc and his (presumably more influential, since they're not bothering commenting here) ilk refuse to relocate to actual communist paradises. Because advocating for communism is so much better than enjoying communism.

[PapayaSF]

It's very simple, really. Just compare messy, impure, real-world capitalism with either 1) clean, theoretical socialism, or 2) cherry-picked, out of context, out of date examples from tiny, ethnically homogeneous (but not for long!) white countries in Northern Europe. To complete the bubble, ignore clean, theoretical capitalism, and 99% of messy, real-world socialism. Now you have the correct social signals political beliefs for all of the best gatherings.

[Suthenboy]

Bernie thinks hunger is a good thing for the American people.

Why is anyone even talking about the guy? Kick that evil motherfucker Grandpa Gulag in the balls and get on with prosecuting The Hildebeast.

[Quincy.]

Why is anyone even talking about the guy?

His supporters exist in large numbers?

[straffinrun]

They are legion.

[PapayaSF]

He's made Facebook even less bearable for me. He's catnip for 90% of the people in my social/geographical set. I don't want to think ill of my friends, so I just don't engage there as much.

[DenverJ]

Facebook is narcissism writ large. It has a few redeeming features, including reminding me of people's birthdays, and making communication with long lost friend/relatives easy.

[Intraveneous Woodchipper]

"Narcissism writ large"

Damn, beautifully put.

[Cytotoxic]

Toronto more or less capitulates to Uber and ridesharing in general: http://news.nationalpost.com/t.....s-for-hire

John Tory is far from the worst mayor TO could have.

[Cytotoxic]

Open Bazaar went online a few days ago.

[Quincy.]

If anybody didn't get their fill of Cold War nostalgia from the orderly evacuation of Portland video earlier, I give you this Target...Austin, Texas,

[Quincy.]

Hey, this is fun! Are you a commie, or a citizen?

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Happy fun time OT, this woman is either the dumbest or the bravest there ever was, you decide.

"A woman was seated in her car at a gas station on Pacific Highway South in Federal Way when she yelled at another driver ? who turned out to be Goodnow ? to slow down as the car sped through the parking lot.

The couple "reacted violently" and Atonio approached the woman's car, jumped up and kicked in the driver's side window. After the couple took off in their sedan, the woman followed them to a nearby apartment complex to get their license-plate number.

By the time the woman pulled into the lot, Atonio and Goodnow were outside of their parked vehicle, a Toyota Camry.

"Atonio pulled out a handgun and fired several shots at the victim, narrowly missing her."

Fearing for her life, the woman drove away, pulling into the parking lot of a tavern on Pacific Highway South and South 272nd Street, less than a quarter mile from the apartment complex.

The woman, seated in her car, was on the phone with a family member when she noticed the same couple approaching ? and the male was waving his gun around in a threatening manner.

The woman ran into the tavern to call 911, leaving her car keys in the ignition ? and saw the couple get into her car and drive away."

[PapayaSF]

A link for the above.

[Butts Wagner]

Is it just me or was Kmele making a point about black crime that was similar to what Irish has made? Frickin racist.

[Notorious UGCC]

Mr. Foster is Black Irish.

[JoWaDat889]

Lets roll with the punches dude. Wow.

http://www.Web-Privacy.tk

[bofratripa@]

I am nine to five work by one hour 85 dollars....R My old work was bad for me ,so I was forced to try something new? Two Years have passed since And I say it was the wisest decision i ever made! Here at this what I do?

--- http://www.alpha-careers.com

[Karinka]

Are you single tonight? A lot of beautiful girls waiting for you to http://goo.gl/WbbNre