Your “Jeb!” Campaign Weekend Open Thread

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by Ugh

I hope I'm not stepping on the other front pagers toes with this, but somehow the Jeb! campaign's 112 page (!) power point briefing for big donors (that took place before the latest GOP debate) was let loose on these here internets.  It is, uh, quite a thing to see (like the BT-16).  It has me seriously considering my disdain for .ppt as a means of communication, because without it we wouldn't have such pearls of wisdom as "race will remain fluid for some time because… voters have A.D.D." (ellipses in the original) and describing Ricky Marco Rubio as the "GOP Obama."  

So, good times in there.  I hope we see similarly vapid power points leaked from all sides.  Anyway, open thread for your discussing pleasure.  Also, too, U.S. troops in Syria?  Sure, why the fnck not….

158 thoughts on “Your “Jeb!” Campaign Weekend Open Thread”

  1. Wow, cleek. That’s like a 2 hour plus presentation! 112 slides… the mind boggles.
    I was particularly taken by Slide 11 claiming that Jeb is the “Best Candidate”. No matter how much better one thinks he would be as President, it’s impossible to argue that he is even mediocre as a candidate. The fact is, he’s terrible at campaigning.

  9. In #12, George Will is quoted: “his record in Florida is …… measuredly more conservative than that of Ronald Reagan’s …”
    “measuredly”?
    Did Will, of all people, have a vocab. lapse?
    http://www.thefreedictionary.com/measuredly
    Shouldn’t it be “measurably”.
    Did he mean “musically”, as in a song and dance.
    Maybe he meant “miserably” more conservative?
    At any rate the young “Babaloo” Rubio, set him on his ear during the debate.
    “Show up for work in the Senate?” asked Rubio in answer to Jeb’s power-pointed outrage. “This country wants a President who doesn’t show up for work, after the first day of signing death warrants for millions of Americans, and I’m just the man for the job!” to great huzzahs from the assembled.
    Is so.

  11. I *think* that last slide is supposed to be their equivalent to the Obama “Hope” poster. *boggles*
    So maybe Jeb is the GOP Obama! So confused….

  12. what’s up with all the slides titled “Ackbar: Strategic Dashboards” ?
    is that Admirable Ackbar (It’s A Trap!), or is that a gasp Arabic word?

  18. The only reason I’d open that powerpoint is to search it for hidden metadata. Not worth the effort to fnck that particular loser rat, sez I.

  19. Hey, look.It’s the shrink government drowning babies assholes abusing the power of the state, and whose message is really this: “My way or the highway.”
    A 2nd Amendment response is long overdue.
    You may now proceed with your regularly scheduled programming.

  20. Nobody (outside a few fanatical libertarians, maybe) really wants to shrink government. What they want is to shrink the parts that do things that they don’t like. While increasing the size, scope, and power of the parts that do things that they want done.
    Thus liberals want to shrink the parts of government which monitor people’s sex lives, and the parts which restrict what information is available to them. And reactionaries (aka, at least by themselves, conservatives) want to shrink the parts that constrain their access to their favorite toys (guns) or provide services to the undeserving (i.e. the poor). Meanwhile virtually nobody admits to wanting to shrink the parts that provide income and medical services to the elderly — either for ideological reasons, on one side, or because their political base is among the elderly, on the other side.
    The level of hypocracy on both sides runs from astounding to incredible.

  21. Well, we liberals only want to shrink the parts of government that monitor people’s sex lives because we feel badly for the poor souls doing the 24-hour monitoring given the wasted amounts of downtime and the sheer boredom between actual incidences of sex between consenting adults in this great country of ours, which talks a good game, but when the time comes, often fall asleep before the sex or the monitoring thereof gets off the ground and we can stand up, so to speak, and be counted.
    Plus, it always seemed to me hypocritical that the monitors themselves take time off to engage in sexual acts on our dime, when really, the monitoring of OUR sexy time is what really makes things exciting, although I wish they’d quit yelling “Cut!” at the most inopportune moments.
    Besides, the monitors are always aghast when it turns they are being monitored as well, although they do seem disappointed when the answer is “No” to the question “Is this thing on?”
    George Costanza wanted to shrink the parts of government, its naughty bits shall we say, doing the monitoring because it was causing him shrinkage of a different horse.

  22. Meanwhile virtually nobody admits to wanting to shrink the parts that provide income and medical services to the elderly
    Crazed socialist here…but I certainly don’t want to shrink this part of the government. I would advocate increasing it.
    How this makes me a hypocrate, I’m just not too clear on. But whatever.

  23. It only makes you a hypocrite if you simultaneously object to the desires of the people you insist on supporting. After all, if they died off, resistance to change (especially the changes you want) would drop dramatically. 😉

  24. “It only makes you a hypocrite if you simultaneously object to the desires of the people you insist on supporting.”
    So the person that said: “I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.” was a YOOGE hypocrite?
    Oookay.

  25. It isn’t hypocracy if you object to what someone says, but defend their right to say it.
    It’s hypocracy if you object to what they say, but defend them. Not their right to say it, but them. That is, you work for and expect their support, because you avoided saying out loud (let alone working against) that you object to what they say.

  26. I think the word is ” hypocrisy”– are computer spell- checkers running amok again?
    Anyway, wj, I can’t figure out what you mean. I want to expand the social safety net and shrink the portions of government that spy on people or blow up the wrong ones, though if someone argued more money would enable the government to stop blowing up the wrong people I’d at least listen to that argument. Probably not agree, but I would listen. Not sure where the hypocrisy would be in this.

  27. Hypocracy is like democracy, but for hypocrites.
    I think that’s actually what the USA has.
    Anyway, back to wj: how is keeping someone from being thrown in jail for their writings not “defending them”?
    Perhaps a bit too subtle a distinction, but if it is hypocrisy, then let’s make the most of it.

  28. No, no, no. It’s hypocrate, not hypocracy. See, supporting “feel-good” programs like medical care or pensions for oldsters is pretty much exactly like when someone crams a hippopotamus into a tiny, innocuous crate and walks right into your house with it. You let your guard down, and lock up your hippo guns like the responsible gun owner you are… and that’s when the insidious fiend opens the crate, a full-grown bull hippo springs forth, and begins devouring and killing everything and everyone it can sink its cruel teeth into. Just like the government. Hence, “hypocrate”. It’s spelled with a “y” instead of an “i” to help get you to drop your guard.

  31. how is keeping someone from being thrown in jail for their writings not “defending them”?
    That is defending them, of course. If, on the other hand, you argue for what they are saying, just because you want to play for their votes….
    But I would be thinking more (in the case of liberals) of someone who demands that we use our leverage as an economic power to push hard for other countries to treat tehir dissidents (or workers) better. While arguing that we shouldn’t be trying to tell other folks how to run their contries, because they have their own cultures with their own values.

  32. I think liberals of that sort are fairly rare–there are liberals who oppose using military force to make other countries reform their societies while supporting boycotts against countries that practice some form of apartheid. I’m one of those, though I would also oppose any boycott or sanctions or blockade that caused enormous economic suffering or actually increased death rates. I favor, I suppose, symbolic sorts of boycotts in some cases, but not the boycotts or blockades or sanctions that Western countries take for granted we can and should and do impose on places like Gaza or Iran or Iraq. If my preferred boycotts resulted in innocent suffering on a large scale then I would be a hypocrite, which is why I don’t favor anything that draconian. Not that it would ever happen anyway.

  33. I, unfortunately, have known people who too exactly those positions simultaneously. (Which is why I brought it up.) But perhaps I have simply been singularily unlucky.

  34. But I would be thinking more (in the case of liberals) of someone who demands that we use our leverage as an economic power to push hard for other countries to treat tehir dissidents (or workers) better. While arguing that we shouldn’t be trying to tell other folks how to run their contries, because they have their own cultures with their own values.

    If it’s a matter of official sanctions, or invasion and regime change, I’m with you, wj.
    But the only place that such “treatment of dissidents (or workers)” gets the kind of attention you suggest is in the context of an international agreement, and I don’t think those “cultures with their own values” have an automatic right to favorable treatment in an agreement with another country. If they don’t like the conditions, they can walk away from the negotiations.
    Or perhaps you mean “we shouldn’t bitch about them”. If so, tough. First Amendement means the USA can unleash Count’s nova-hot bitchin’ against ANYONE and EVERYONE. No prisoners, no quarter. If they don’t like it, they can move to North Sentinel Island, where they don’t have to hear any of it.

  35. wj,
    since woody wilson (no relation to brian), american liberals have had absolutely no qualms about “trying to tell other folks how to run their countries”. as to the rest, i fear you suffer from a terrible misunderstanding. many on the more left left mount their foreign policy critique as an extension of the critique of the capitalist system. insofar as powerful international corporations are exporting that economic system, the results should be fair game for criticism.
    the assault on worker power is the same, whether it is in bangladesh or gary. social and cultural differences across nations are pretty much beside the point.
    our foreign policy is misguided, not because some invoke an alleged humanitarian non-interventionist principle, but because it is misguided, arrogant, geo-politically stupidly ignorant, hypocrtically self serving, and intellectually bankrupt.
    you know things are pretty bad when putin sounds sensible.

  36. the only place that such “treatment of dissidents (or workers)” gets the kind of attention you suggest is in the context of an international agreement,
    Snarki,
    If we are talking about insisting that countries abide by agreements that they are already party to, then that’s a different story.
    But see, for example, the demands that the TPP include provisions on the subject. Granted, that would be an international agreement, if it is agreed to. But it isn’t one yet. That’s flat out telling someone else how to run their country — albeit, admittedly, essentially offering them a bribe to change things.

  37. arrogant, geo-politically stupidly, ignorant, hypocrtically self serving, and intellectually bankrupt.
    That definitely sums up big chunks of it. Although I would modify it slightly to “ignorantly well-intentioned” — which accounts for at least some, and possibly most, of the “geo-politically stupid” parts.

  38. Open thread?
    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/rise-wedding-loan-jump-bandwagon-110036285.html
    Seems kind of half-baked to me:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrdsIxelE2M
    Mike Nichols needed some sort of punctuation mark at the need of that great scene. The toaster is perfect.
    I love that the toaster is front and center the entire scene. It’s an example of Chekhov’s dictum that if there is a gun hanging above the mantle in the first scene of a play, most likely that gun will be fired at someone before the curtain comes down.
    But innocent moviegoers, elementary school children, and college students tell us that roughly once a month.

  39. wj, so it’s okay to strictly enforce stuff that’s already agreed to, but heaven forfend actually pushing to get stuff into the agreements before they’re signed?
    As far as the TPP goes, it seems clear that the US negotiators worked pretty hard to ignore any objections from actual, you know citizens.
    BTW, it’s part of our culture to bitch and complain and poo-fling at folks doing cr*p we don’t like, don’t you dare try to oppress our culture, in the name of internationalism!

  40. But see, for example, the demands that the TPP include provisions on the subject…
    Most nations are signatories to whole hosts of international agreements, cf UN Charter, etc.
    In one way or another, you could probably find that just about any nation on earth is therefore formally committed to worker rights.
    So, I’m still not quite understanding the point you are trying to make in this thicket.
    regards,

  41. Jeb Bush today demanded of the debate networks that they provide him with a selection of nails to eat at his podium in lieu of any difficult questions.
    Ted Cruz demanded that Rush Limbaugh be lead moderator in future debates while Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and a bevy of other toothless conservative fluffers are stationed on their knees between the podiums and the candidates to keep everyone equally on the up and up.
    Doctors will be on hand to make sure the candidates elections don’t last more than four hours, to the great relief of the electorate for whom a good rogering is a hobby, not a vocation.
    Each candidate will be provided an opportunity for an opening money shot and then further opportunities at 20-minute intervals until the climax of the debates.
    Babaloo Rubio objected that this would provide Carly Fiorina an unfair leg up, and Donald Trump added that he will prevent that sort of thing by keeping a leg over her.
    Dr. Ben Carson said the Amercian people expect ample parking in the rear come January 2017 and that he alone is qualified to give it to them good and hard.

  42. Hypocracy and hypercracy are surely useful Greek derivations for, respectively, underactive and overactive government ?
    So one can quite fairly and consistently call libertarians hypocrats; and socialists hypercrats…

  45. I heartily favor the candidates for the GOP nomination holding their future debates under their own ground rules. Don’t know what ground rules they would all agree to, but creating consensus in the GOP is not my problem.
    I enthusiastically favor them inviting only non-Lamestream media into the debate venue, and imposing any gag rules they like. Don’t know whether any media outlets (even FOX News) would accept, but ensuring a large audience for the GOP is not my problem either.
    I favor these things out of idealism: political parties are private organizations, political candidates are private individuals; they owe no duty to, and are owed no support from, either government or journalism. If the GOP wants free TV time for infomercials, broadcasters are under no obligation to provide it. The general election campaign is public business. Primary elections are not.
    I recognize I am arguing against interest here, because I sincerely believe that the best way for the GOP candidates to present themselves as well-informed, well-reasoned, and well-meaning to the largest possible audience is to hold debates moderated by Rush Limbaugh on a sound-proof stage behind an opaque curtain. But the GOP won’t take my advice.
    –TP

  46. so it’s okay to strictly enforce stuff that’s already agreed to, but heaven forfend actually pushing to get stuff into the agreements before they’re signed?
    Snarki, I have no problem with pushing to get stuff like that into agreements. What I have a problem with is doing so while insisting that the preferences of the other culture must be honored and never questioned. You can have either one. You cannot have both, unless you want to be considered a hypocrite.

  47. wj,
    ah, that makes your point much clearer, thanks. I’m not sure who would be in that particular hypocritical box, unless it’s different ‘leftier-than-thou’ factions arguing with one another, or where different issues are getting treatment (labor safety vs. press freedom, frex).
    Concrete examples welcome.

  49. and really, putting an exclamation point after your name as a way of branding your political campaign is just an invitation to invidious comparisons with crappy, inane Broadway musical failures.

  51. Open thread! Here’s a couple for consideration:
    If you support mass transit and are arguing with the yahoo who says we just need to build more roads, get prepared. Read this.
    If the USofYaY is so great, why do so few of us have any f*cking money?
    Does Marx have relevance today? Opinions differ.
    Food for thought. Culled from Mike the Mad Biologist. Enjoy.

  52. Concrete examples welcome.
    Regretably, the evidence I have is anecdotal. Which is to say, I have personally heard acquaintences make those combinations of argument — rather than having readily available links to someone making them on-line.
    And unfortunately, my day job is going to make any significant web searching this week improbable.

  53. wj,
    yeah, I hear you. There’s always some guy at the end of the bar telling everyone his inconsistent, hypocritical, incoherent opinions.
    Unless they have some actual authority or influence over foreign policy, it’s best to just chalk it up to American Culture (that must never be sassed, and long may it wave).

  54. putting an exclamation point after your name as a way of branding your political campaign is just an invitation to invidious comparisons with crappy, inane Broadway musical failures.
    Well, there was Oklahoma!, though Jeb is hardly OK.

  55. one of the local car dealers has a commercial out right now where the announcer says something about how their prices are the lowest they’ve ever been and then a guy in a Donald Trump mask shows up and says “just like Jeb’s poll numbers!”
    ouch.
    when you’ve lost the jackass used car screamers, it’s probably time to pack it in.
    i can’t find the commercial on-line, sadly.

  56. putting an exclamation point after your name as a way of branding your political campaign is just an invitation to invidious comparisons with crappy, inane Broadway musical failures.
    Or to the musician formerly known as Prince, for a while, before he could be known as Prince again.
    Most of the GOP crew doesn’t need an exclamation point after their name so much as an interrobang. Perhaps more than one.

  57. ABC, vying for a future Republican debate, is upping the ante:
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/lara-spencer-donald-trump-lap-photo
    The Donald wants whatever moderator is asking a question to sit in his lap and play cutesy with his ear while he answers.
    Rubio countered with a demand for a lap dance from Dan Rather during his closing remarks.
    Cruz wants a ventriloquist’s dummy in his spitting image to sit in his lap so he can stick his hand up the back of the dummy’s suit coat and work the controls.
    Bush, ever more aggressive, demanded a happy ending.
    Carly Fiorina said the lot of them better be ready for the reverse cowgirl gambit, echoing her laptop strategy at HP.
    Dr. Carson said he don’t need no stinking dummy since he’ll be showing up as he is and that should be dumb enough for government work.

  58. Right down the road from me:
    http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_29064963/open-carry-becomes-focus-after-colorado-springs-shooting
    A veteran of three tours in Iraq was shot dead right off his bicycle, along with two innocent women minding their own fucking business.
    Money quotes:
    “Police agencies across the state say the statute poses a difficult question of how to react when citizens call — frequently — to report an armed person in public.”
    ‘”Is this person exercising their rights or about to start a very serious situation in which someone is going to be killed?” said Jacki Kelley, spokeswoman for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. “We just don’t know the difference.”‘
    As far as I’m concerned, there is no difference between those two items.
    Oh, you’re exercising your rights. Fuck you. Not in my face, you’re not. How do I know what you are up to?
    I don’t advise tapping the guy on the shoulder and inquiring sweetly what his intentions are, or maybe engaging him in a mind-reading discussion regarding Tench Coxe’s masturbation habits back in the day.
    Rather, if are like me and you are old enough to have nothing much to lose and you don’t own a gun, nor want to, immediately take them out any way you can.
    Alternative methods have been suggested n these very pages, stab them with any sharp object at hand, run them over with an SUV, twice, bash their head and face in with a rock, get behind them and strangle the f*ck, whatever you can do and then get the gun away from them and beat them to death with it.
    What’s that you say, you are exercising your right to open carry? So am I. The right to hurt you for being an asshole without attempting to guess your intentions, and then ask questions later, if you’re still living.
    And that’s just the guys who are doing the public carrying, crazy or not, exercising their rights or not.
    There’s no telling what sort of savage violence the pigf*cking, murderous, vermin, NRA, conservative, Republican filth in and out of government deserve who campaign for such laws and enabled these murders and all of the other fucking horseshit in this country.
    But it needs to be shock and gruesome on a mass scale.

  60. I’m reading Richard III at the moment. His words pretty well sum up most of the Republican primary crew:
    “I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl.
    The secret mischiefs that I set abroach
    I lay unto the grievous charge of others….
    …. but then I sign, and with a piece of Scripture
    Tell them that God bids us do good for evil;
    And thus I clothe my naked villainy
    With odd old ends stol’n forth of holy writ,
    And seem a saint when most I play the devil.”

  62. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/11/04/1444154/-Matt-Bevin-defeats-Jack-Conway-to-reclaim-Kentucky-governorship-for-the-Republicans
    In his campaign documents, he has promised to make unions illegal in Kentucky, as in most Communist countries, will junk state worker pensions, and disconnect Kynect, the very successful Obamacare exchange, and discontinue the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, thus promising the attempted murder of more than a million Kentuckians.
    Kim Davis will be permitted to f*ck gays the way she likes it.
    He doesn’t clothe his naked villainy and the subhuman majority of Kentuckians want to see the blood flow.

  63. “I talked to one man who had half his brain removed by Carson when he was two and now rides a horse and will most likely vote for him.
    And I thought to myself- that makes sense.”
    From balloon juice. Course the writer is now being accused of political incorrectness, probably by the Half-a-Brain for Carson PAC.
    Or maybe its the equestrian lobby.

  64. Regarding the Colorado Springs murders, I’d advise citizens in that fair city, when they call the cops to report a guy walking around openly carrying a weapon for no reason and if they desire immediate action to allay their concerns that murder might be afoot, to describe the suspect as a black or a Mexican.
    Also, describe him as unarmed, since these characteristics apparently are the tipoff in this great country of ours that murder most foul is on the offing.
    He’s sure to be taken out.
    Think about this with the non-Carson half of your brains: we’ve experienced a spate of cases across the country, regularly scheduled it seems, like a miniseries, wherein unarmed people, mostly blacks, are gunned down for slight to no reason by police, and now we have a case where a distraught-looking white guy is reported to be carrying a weapon down city streets and the cops have to thumb thru the small print in the State Constitution to figure out if they might — maybe — be able to respond, in case Wayne LaPierre might birth a cow and shoot it, while three are butchered.
    As a class of people, we Americans are full of sh*t.
    The wrong people are being interdicted.

  65. Count, you’re overheating again.
    Your 7:27 PM is way too close to seriously advocating violence.
    A big part of the trouble with open carry for guns is that it makes it too hard to tell the actual responsible gun owners from the mass murderer wannabes. Similarly, though I think you *probably* aren’t actually planning to kill people, talking like you do gives cover and lowers the activation energy for people who are.
    Chill, or chill out.

  66. You mean, I yell “THEATER” at a crowded fire and the authorities show up?
    I’ll chill for now and consider the “out” option.
    The activation energy is plenty low without my help and despite my efforts.
    What do you think, ugh is going to run out and go on a killing spree?

  67. DocSci: Chill, or chill out.
    Gimme a fucking break, Doc. You think The Count should chill his hot rhetoric down? How far? To a cold, silent, seething rage, maybe?
    Between the gun enthusiasts and the civility fetishists, I wonder how much room is left any more for an “appropriate” reaction to an obscene atrocity.
    –TP

  68. Tony, We can all decry the insanity of the gun nuts. And comment on the predictable problems that arise from their approach to the subject. Many of us do.
    But all without ranting about how they should all not only die out, but die violently at the hands of others.

  70. I don’t begrudge Doc her effort to maintain standards.
    I’m perfectly aware of the envelopes I push and sometimes when I click the “post” button, I know the shock collar I wear (which Hilzoy kindly lent me years ago) is about to have its voltage dialed up by the remote, invisible hand.
    That Doc is not moderating the Republican debates, serving on police review boards, or fashioning chew toys laced with soporifics to throw at the grring likes of Coulter, Cruz, and Lapierre, to name three, is indicative of how little of the market for non-violent civility inducement has been addressed in our society.
    “You can’t advocate killing other people on ObWi. Even if you think they suck.
    Them’s the rules.”
    I could quibble with that assertion, but accept a simple “Yup” as a sure sign of my agreement with the local rules.
    Advocacy for killing other people by various means, concealed and unconcealed, should be left to the experts such as the Redstate board and contributors, most of the leaders in the Republican Presidential primaries, the so-called Freedom Caucus in the House, the lawmakers and electorate in Colorado who enabled the murders in Colorado Springs (advocacy for carrying weapons in public designed exclusively to kill can only be a coincidence with advocacy for killing other people, I guess), and the new Governor of Kentucky.
    And, thank you, Tony.
    I’m all better now.

  72. Maybe there is an upside to the Colorado Springs incident.
    I’ll bet there were dozens or more citizens who saw the guy carrying the gun in public on his way to killing three, and who were contemplating robbing banks, stealing cars, shoplifting, maybe applying for health insurance through the Colorado Healthcare exchange, or had merely been impolite recently, and who, contra ugh upthread, abruptly reverted to the straight and narrow and began leading a more courteous, less criminal life, as the advocates for constantly-present incipient bloodshed have claimed all along would happen in a well-armed society.
    In that context, three corpses on slabs in the Colorado Springs morgue seem a paltry price to pay for order and the metronomic, nothing-to-see-here conditioning of the body politic to the sight of killing weaponry displayed in public.
    And think of the tax dollars saved, or at least the disbursement delayed, by civil servants remaining non-responsive, and wear and tear delayed on their sirens and flashing lights and saved for more important matters.
    I’m coming to terms with these killings.
    Who says only one can fly over the cuckoo’s nest?

  74. Perhaps stating it a bit too ardently, the Count is completely right about open carry. It’s the worst thing ever for public safety and has nothing to do with Second Amendment rights. If anything, it cuts against Second Amendment rights because, as incidents like these multiply and as it becomes obvious there can be no intervention until shots are fired, the case for gun owners’ rights will be undercut. Same with arming college students. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  75. After following Nigel’s second link, I cannot let this pass:
    the Lioness on the Cheese Grater
    I’ll leave it to the reader to find out what that is, assuming the reader isn’t lucky enough to know already.

  78. Wow. I was unfamiliar with “the Lioness on the Cheese Grater” so I looked it up and discovered the standard interpretation.
    Then I discovered this learned article upon the same topic, and spent several awestruck moments wandering down the bypaths of classical themes and imagery to arrive at an interpretation very different from the standard one.
    Recommended to all incipient classicists, avid students of sexual positions, and the rest of the ObWi readership (if any) that may not be included in the aforementioned categories.

  82. I thought this was interesting on Carson.
    tl;dr – Carson apparently finds Bircher W. Cleon Skousen’s view of the world persuasive.
    to my eye, this continues to be relevant, 50-plus years on.

  83. From the Harpers article at russell’s link(incredibly insightful):
    The basic elements of contemporary right-wing thought can be reduced to three: First, there has been the now-familiar sustained conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in Roosevelt’s New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or communism. A great many right-wingers would agree with Frank Chodorov, the author of The Income Tax: The Root of All Evil, that this campaign began with the passage of the income-tax amendment to the Constitution in 1913.

  84. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days now, and call me old-fashioned but I just can’t get my head around the combination of “sex position” and “cheese grater”.
    Spatula, flour sifter, olive oil cruet, maybe even rolling pin. All possibles.
    Cheese grater? I’m just not seeing it.

  85. As pointed out by the various articles upthread, ancient Greek cheese graters were closer in shape to knives than to modern box graters, if that helps.

  86. i just can’t get past grated cheese.
    to me, it brings up some pungent – and frankly unpleasant, since i’m not a fan of the kinds of cheese one grates – associations.

  87. If you follow dr ngo’s link, you’ll find that the sexual position doesn’t involve a lioness doing something with a cheese grater, as I had originally interpreted it. Lionesses, and other creatures, were (supposedly?) depicted on ornamental handles on cheese graters (and other household implements), typically in a crouching position.
    That takes some of the weirdness (and fun, if you’re into that sort of thing) out of it, I guess, but there it is.

  89. So, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was an erotic film?…
    It certainly wasn’t devoid of eroticism, if I remember correctly. Wasn’t there a scene where combat was turned to love-making in rather short order with the non-striking application of a hand to a groin?

  90. Lionesses, and other creatures, were (supposedly?) depicted on ornamental handles on cheese graters (and other household implements), typically in a crouching position.
    Actually, if you dig deeper into those links you find this to be rather in question, as all archaeological examples of cheese graters were found to be functional rather than ornamental in design. It’s not entirely clear what’s going on with that lovely turn of phrase.

  91. First, there has been the now-familiar sustained conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in Roosevelt’s New Deal, to undermine free capitalism
    Does anyone have an idea of when “capitalism” and “America” became conflated?
    I don’t think it was part of the concept in the early days. The founder-generation administrations and Congresses pursued policies that were, frankly, mercantile. The Jacksonians who followed them were populist, but hardly capitalist in any sense we would recognize now.
    Unless I’m misunderstanding the history, which is possible.
    When the Soviet Union collapsed, everyone applauded it as a “triumph of free-market capitalism”.
    Not republican self-government, not rule of law, not protected civil liberties.
    Capitalism.
    When did the US become all about capital?

  94. Well, there are a great many people who misunderstand what the 2nd law is saying, so Dr. Carson is in…plentiful company.
    What it doesn’t say, though, is that even in a closed system, entropy will increase homogeneously. It says that the sum of the entropies will tend to increase. People who use the 2nd law of thermodynamics as evidence that the universe had to be ordered by a divine being are idiots. It’s an argument that reeks of studied ignorance.
    I say that as a guy who is both religious and passingly acquainted with thermodynamics.

  95. If one follows the surmises of the author of the exceedingly learned author of the article I cited, the sexual position implied *may* be that of the woman on top (lioness – symbol of bravery and rule-breaking, etc.) “grating” the man’s groin with her own. But this remains speculative – and thus offers us all a spark of speculation in our otherwise dull lives. (I speak for myself only, of course.)

  96. Furthermore, regarding natural laws, any physicist would look at purported violations of said laws as something fascinating, to be studied and established as fact. Because it would tell them something new about the universe. Eventually, someone like e.g. Einstein would show up and advance a new paradigm that would (also e.g.) explain the long-observed but never-explained oddness in the orbit of the planet Mercury.
    I would also advance the notion that the Big Bang represents an event across which the 2nd law probably cannot be regarded to hold, by virtue of there not having been a universe at all on the other side of that event. The 2nd law is an empirical law, deduced from years of observation. If it turned out to not be true in some special circumstances, that wouldn’t invalidate all of cosmology in its current state.
    All of this is guesswork on my part, because I am not a physicist.

  97. http://mormoncurtain.com/topic_cleonskousen_section1.html
    Skousen believed in the worldwide Jewish conspiracy to subvert the banking system (one wonders if Bibi Netanyahu’s people will go after this black man for actually following the teachings of a true anti-Semite; I expect not) and was a firm believer in the Mormon Church’s racist claptrap from not too long ago:
    http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,341556
    He was a fringe nut, like Ayn Rand, both anathema to traditional conservatives when traditional conservatives had credibility.
    Now both are ascendant.
    It’s gotta be stopped.

  98. There aren’t too many places you can go outside of OBWI and learn, consecutively, as worlds collide, the in and outs of the laws of Thermodynamics and the in and out of applied friction between cheese grator and “crotch”ing lioness.
    And both principles explained with such modesty and self-effacement — “I am not a physicist” and “I speak for myself, only”.
    All I know is that I was grating some parmigiano reggiano on my marinara the other night and there was aroused a spark of speculation in me that quickly reached a veritable big bang and then just as quickly entropy set in and I had to lie down during for a bit and resume the, uh, grating roughly twenty minutes later, though the underlying pasta remained al dente.
    All I was missing was the lioness.

  99. When did the US become all about capital?
    My sense is that it was when our great rival was a country (the USSR) which said it was communist and opposed to capitalism. In a sense, we let our enemy define us. Make of that what you will.

  100. When did the US become all about capital?
    I’d guess it was when the government greatly expanded its powers, rationalized the economic, and especially the monetary system, and crushed, in rather bloody fashion, the last vestiges of the aristocratic ethos.
    Thank you, Abraham Lincoln

  101. News for tomorrow:
    Ben Carson will make a major policy statement in the late afternoon regarding his theories explaining gravity.
    He will also deny that the construction of the Pyramids was a government program gone awry.
    Donald Trump will belch the full text of the Bill of Rights and then claim trademark over the lot of them and demand royalties.
    Jeb Bush, for his measly part, will deny New Hampshire their requests for septic tanks with the excuse that the Pyramids weren’t built in a day, but, hey, things .. .. aren’t going to happen if he’s elected.
    http://www.balloon-juice.com/2015/11/05/open-thread-jeb-gop-voters-and-the-septic-truth/
    He then excused himself to use the facilities and backed up the New Hampshire sewage facilities for a fortnight, at which point the denizens of that hardy state opted to exercise the “or die” part of their state motto.
    Ted Cruz, for his part, limped downstage and summed up his view of the electorate thusly:
    “Was ever woman in this humor wooed?
    Was ever woman in this humor won?
    I’ll have her, but I will not keep her long.”

  102. Count, you missed the whispered content of JEB!s pitch in NH: “I’ll pump your septic tanks for FREE! Let’s just say that it’ll come in handy for the next debate…”
    I, for one, look forward to Carson’s explanation of ‘intelligent falling’, which has never been made in such detail and with such care.

  103. It’s not that hard to do pretty well in good old tax-free New Hampshire if you live within convenient commuting distance to the technology sector located just south of the border.
    The problem for Raymond is that, even though it’s in the relatively affluent southern tier of the state, it’s not situated well to take advantage of the major north/south commuting arteries.
    No sewers for you, Raymond.

  104. When did the US become all about capital?
    Surely with the building of the transcontinental railroad, the financial shenanigans around which formed a template for succeeding generations ?

  105. A quick jaunt back in blog-time…
    There are some unknowns in thermo and the Big Bang, In particular, when you try to translate ‘classical’ thermo into something that works in a General Relativity framework (of super-high temperatures and relativistic plasmas, etc), most thermodynamic quantities (temperature, pressure, etc) are easy to translate, but entropy is a problem: there’s more than one way to do it.
    There’s no firm theoretical basis for choosing one “GR friendly” form of entropy over another, and since heat engines with black holes and relativistic plasmas are hard to build, zero experimental help as well.
    And zero observational consequences, AFAIK.
    You know what deity is responsible for this state of affairs? LOKI.

  107. Robert Reich asks a former GOP Rep about the current race:

    Me: “So what do really you think of these candidates?”
    Him: “You want my unvarnished opinion?”
    Me: “Please. That’s why I called.”
    Him: “They’re all nuts.”
    Me: “Seriously. What do you really think of them?”
    Him: “I just told you. They’re bonkers. Bizarre. They’re like a Star Wars bar room.”

  108. Here’s the rest of the conversation from Reich:
    Me: “How did it happen? How did your party manage to come up with this collection?”
    Him: “We didn’t. They came up with themselves. There’s no party any more. It’s chaos. Anybody can just decide they want to be the Republican nominee, and make a run for it. Carson? Trump? They’re in the lead and they’re both out of their f*cking minds.”
    Me: “That’s not reassuring.”
    Him: “It’s a disaster. I’m telling you, if either of them is elected, this country is going to hell. The rest of them aren’t much better. I mean, Carly Fiorina? Really? Rubio? Please. Ted Cruz? Oh my god. And the people we thought had it sewn up, who are halfway sane – Bush and Christie – they’re sounding almost as batty as the rest.”
    Me: “Who’s to blame for this mess?”
    Him: “Roger Ailes, David and Charles Koch, Rupert Murdoch, Rush Limbaugh. I could go on. They’ve poisoned the American mind and destroyed the Republican Party.
    Me: “Nice talking with you.”

  109. I wish Reich would tell us who the former Republican Rep is.
    I suspect he fears for his life and that his family will be harassed and threatened by Republican operatives.
    There is something very, very creepy about these people, the Presidential candidates and the riffraff who have been permitted to take over the House and are moving now to the Senate, not to mention the filth infesting the Republican media.
    This entire thing is almost like a Zombie movie, and the one I’m thinking of is the miniseries “The Returned”, a French series you can watch on Netflix.
    They’re here, and they want something, and they will get it, or else.

  111. I guess it’s time to take a closer look at Carson’s medical bonafides. That degree from Yale. That residency at Johns Hopkins.
    Given the pathological nature of this serial lying.
    His patients need to seek second opinions immediately. When he was poking around in their brain tissue, did he really do what he said he did?

  112. My contacts forwarded this preview of Ted Cruz’s opening statement, as demanded, at the next debate:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDxnXgYPnKg
    Face it, put a wig on Cruz and you have Olivier’s Richard III,, with his pedantic, precise enunciation of where we are going if he has anything to do with it.
    He also demanded that his father serve as sole moderator at all future debates.
    Carson and Trump opined that they preferred less talk from the get-go and more direct action against liberals and the republican establishment, a la McKellen in the same role:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tm1kaanjd8M

  114. Hey, I resent that !
    Shakespeare fable/propaganda notwithstanding, there’s reasonable evidence that Richard was (by the standards of the time), a pretty decent king.
    And whatever else he might have been, certainly not a republican….
    And in any event, Cruz is both less persuasive, and scarier that the crookback.

  118. Jeb Bush just now bragged that HE was the shooter in the Tower at the University of Texas in 1966, adding that his powerful family connections convinced Charles Whitman to take the fall for the 14 murdered and 33 wounded.
    “Look”, said Bush shrugging, “I was 13 years old at the time, but anyone who claims I DIDN’t commit these murders is probably trying to grab your guns from ya, and is lying to boot. Let’s see Politico make like I didn’t shoot those people. I dare them.
    Why the admission now, Mr. Bush?
    “Have you looked at Carson’s poll numbers. The Republican Party wants someone as President who has a close familiarity with violence and can ruthlessly leverage his adolescent rage into policy decisions that can do the most amount of killing damage to the most number of Americans the first day as President.”
    Hillary Clinton is meeting with her advisers this afternoon to come up with a news release admitting to ordering the attack on the Benghazi consulate and the murder of the four employees, including the Ambassador as a way of strengthening her bonafides for ruthlessness among more conservative Democrats and the few on-the-fence Republicans.
    Besides, the consulate employees were government employees with healthcare plans and pensions, one of the many groups targeted by Republicans for liquidation come 2017, so the thinking goes in the Clinton camp, how damaging could this admission be.
    The feeling is that by competing with the Republican candidates on their turf of adolescent rage and attempted murder, she may peel away enough f*cking a*shole ignorant Republicans to her side.

  119. “Politico hitpiece = overreach by definition”
    So, you’re standing by Carson’s assertion that he WAS a violent thug as an adolescent, and that his friends and acquaintances claims, as transcribed to Politico, which Carson denies, that he was a quiet unassuming, maybe even studious kid who never hurt a fly are lies and yellow journalism.
    Skittles, schmittles, you say. Carson should have been shot dead when he was a thug, but since he was luckier than Trayvon Martin and allowed to outgrow his bad attitude, let’s elect him President.

  120. It overreached, but moreso in tone than in fact. By all appearances this was a clear-cut case of dishonest self-aggrandizement on Carson’s part. If we adopt the standard proposed by Carson’s campaign’s rebuttal, pretty much every US member of the ObWi commentariat was “offered a full scholarship to West Point”, insofar as they weren’t explicitly denied admission, and had they pursued admission and been accepted, they (alongside every one of their classmates) would not have had to pay any tuition, as WP requires service in exchange for education, not cash.

  121. There’s no firm theoretical basis for choosing one “GR friendly” form of entropy over another
    But then, there is no theoretical reason why matter should have overwhelmed anti-matter at the beginning of the universe. Indeed, theory suggests that they should have been present in essentially equal amounts . . . leading to mutual destruction and no matter at all. Which would have been tough on our prospects for existing.

  122. wj: observation trumps theory. The GR/thermo problem I mentioned was that there is neither theory nor observation to resolve the question.
    Which I guess puts it firmly in the domain of theology, but I’ve yet to hear of any theology that gets stated using 2nd rank tensor equations…

  123. Let’s move beyond the Republican crazy crap.
    Rachel Maddow just interviewed Martin O’Malley and now is chatting with Bernie. I’m for Hillary because I don’t want to get attached to anyone else, but man are these Dems great. All of them!!!!! I will wait until the primaries are over, and then be a Dembot as per usual.

  126. The comment thread to that USAToday piece is also overflowing with open and unvarnished racism, social darwinism and other -isms from the Right end of the spectrum with a few lonely voices of sanity instantly shouted down.
    One of the more original claims is that US born n-words do not speak English unlike immigrants from African countries.
    There was also the hope that the n-words will massacre the libtards in their gun free zones and be gunned down by white conservative citizens in their well-defended white-only districts.

  127. A professional Republican:
    https://consortiumnews.com/2015/10/29/gop-and-the-rise-of-anti-knowledge/
    His profile:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lofgren
    Incidentally, I’ve decided to take the Republican Party’s counsel (this follows my full conversion to an expansive Second Amendment, far beyond what the NRA envisions) regarding the inadvisability and even the unAmerican and godless pursuit of expertise, professionalism, scientific inquiry, qualifications, and elitist common sense, in all walks of life and so I now offer free brain surgery in my apartment, a la Carsoni.
    First come, first serve.
    There’s a guy on another floor who is having severe headaches and spells, so I told him I’d open his head up and have a look-see.
    The surgery is scheduled for 3 pm today.
    Does anyone know if I should wash my hands first?
    The Hand of God and the Invisible Hand always appear to be badly manicured and frankly, soiled, when they intervene in human events, so I’m just wondering if it matters.
    I mean it’s not like it’s brain surgery or anything.
    More like running a country, which anyone can do, even sh*theads.

  129. Something tells me Carson is going to flunk Perceptions 304:
    http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum
    That’s the name of the class at Yale he made up, and that ain’t all.
    See, this is bad news. Now another dangerous, know-nothing piece of sh*t is going to take the lead in the Republican Presidential polling.
    Those Siamese twins he said he separated only THINK they are separated.
    Such is the power of conservative horsesh*t to win over the masses.

  130. the adjective to describe Carson is ‘Reaganesque’.
    No way. Agree with him or disagree, there’s no question that Reagan’s experience (e.g. as Governor of California) made him enormously better qualified than Carson is. Not to mention having a far better handle on the real world. And on how to work with those who disagreed with him.

  143. I’m not saying I was the wizard of Oz, but I was called in to transplant a brain into the Scarecrow:
    http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/11/ben-carsons-psychology-test-story-gets-even-weirder
    See, normal people do or say something (or not) and then wait a respectful period of time for the parody of their actions to appear somewhere.
    We’ve been witness more and more lately to the Republican habit of beating parody to the punch by a nose. No sooner do I write something ridiculously imaginary about one or all of them in the afternoon, but then I hear that they’ve said or done that very thing that very morning.
    Donald Trump appears on Saturday Night Live in a parody skit regarding his Presidency, except that it’s not a parody, it’s a documentary prequel of precisely what his Presidency will be.
    I guarantee that the Donald looked at the draft of the skit he was in and said to the writers: “I thought this was a comedy show. Sh8t, this sketch is a blueprint for my first week in office. Who wrote this? David McCullough and Lou Cannon?”
    Now, comes Carson, who reads a parody that apparently had nothing to do with him and he converts that past parody into the fool’s gold of his life story, and among other sociopathies, it’s not even funny any longer.
    This is the largest collection of oddballs to get close to the nuclear button in American electoral history (prove to me it’s not) since Sterling Hayden and Slim Pickens blew up the world in “Dr. Strangelove”, and that was a parody ….. I think.
    I can’t tell any longer.

  144. Normally, the delusional, the insane, and the criminally psycho types are dissuaded from seeking the Presidency or other high office some considerable time before they actually do it.
    Here’s a true story (told to me secondhand) about alcoholic delusion, but it’s funny.
    My best friends Dad (now deceased) served on a Navy supply ship in World War II. Did not see combat up close. Over the years, he nurtured a case of alcoholism and to boot, he had a lively imagination.
    Decades later, in the 1970s, when my friend was in his 20’s and living away from home this phone conversation occurred late at night between dad and son:
    Dad: Hey, this is Dad. Turn on the TV quick. There’s a movie I’m in.
    Son: O.K? (smelling alcohol on Dad’s breath over the phone line) … I’m watching. Go on.
    The movie was a World War II film (black and white B film late 1940s; I saw it long ago, can’t remember the title) and the scene was of a Navy pilot and co-pilot trying to land their plane on the heaving deck of an aircraft carrier.
    Dad: That’s Bobby, my co-pilot, and me coming in for a landing. Watch this.
    Son: O.K. Looks kind of harrowing. (rolls eyes)
    Dad: Let me tell you, landing one of those things in a storm in the middle of the ocean was like trying to land a piano on a postage stamp.
    Dad narrates over the phone what is transpiring on screen: “Alright, we’re coming around for a second try. I’m letting Bobby get in some landing time, cause the kid needed it. Here we go. Get those flaps full. Keep the nose up, Bobby. That’s right. Don’t stall. This is going to be smooth sailing. Set her down just so……”
    On screen, the plane indeed hits the deck but its hook misses the trip wire and careens sideways across the deck and smashes into a bunch of other planes and explodes. There is a cheesy closeup of the pilot’s and copilot’s faces as impact occurs, and the fire and heat from the explosion turns their heads into charred crispy critterdom.
    Son: Dad? Are you there? Hello?”
    After a long, silent interval….
    Dad: “I knew I should have taken over the controls from Bobby for that landing. Well, tomorrow’s another day.”

  146. Several Republican candidates were going to put forward the fossilized 11-million-year-old arthropod brain as their choice for a primo Cabinet position in their Administrations — probably Secretary of State — but front runner Dr. Ben Carson pooh-pooh that option, positing that the scientist’s so-called research is an obvious hoax and besides, it is a well-known fact that Fred Flintstone was a Progressive in his day.

  147. The unwashed hand of God, with unkempt, dingy cuticles, intervenes in a life again.
    http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/11/paging-garry-trudeau
    How oddly peculiar is it that Progressive-hater Dr. Kit Carson appropriates one of the most “notorious” media Progressive’s and parodist’s early sophomoric college parodies into an uplifting, self-congratulatory part of his own mythical past as the chosen one?
    Well, not at all. It’s sickening and frightening, like finding out a man about to assume the Presidency is actually an alien bug living inside a hosting human husk and beholden to a distant bug planet.
    Will the innard remains of the real Dr Ben Carson, accomplished surgeon, be found in a dumpster out behind Johns Hopkins University Hospital, like the human leftovers after the body snatchers had their way.
    Nevertheless, this should give Carson a big boost among the base.
    Prediction: At some point this week, if ersatz Carson’s poll numbers fold, a conservative pundit, let’s see … oh, say Ann Coulter …. will crack that this is what the Republican Party gets for acting like them Democrats and embracing an inferior race to its bosom, and really, the slave trade that brought THOSE people over here was nothing more than another Progressive affirmative action scheme. After all, the Confederacy was an idea hatched by a Democrat, amirite?

  148. Jeb eats a fake nail, says “Yum”:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufGlBv8Z3NU
    This is sure to put a damper on Republican outreach to the baby Hitler vote, which comprising a good 30% of their base, could swing the election against him as the goose-toddling Nazis rally to Ted Cruz.
    Michelle Bachmann sez she would keep hands off baby Hitler (and Himmler) because their presence in history was part of God’s nefarious plot to slaughter most of the Jews:
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/michele-bachmann-israel-convert-jews-rapture
    I wonder if the headlines in the Israeli papers read: “Crazy Murdering American Woman Threatens Holocaust to End All Holocausts for the World Jews Who Don’t Convert … Escapes to America Before Apprehension By Mossad”
    The Republican Party exports its murdering insanity.

  150. I was born here and have lived here for almost 60 years now, but frankly I have no explanation to offer for the state of this nation at this point in time.
    Or, really, any point in time. The crazy has always been with us, it just finds new things to seize upon every generation or two.
    And/or, the old thing gets handed down to a new demographic to be their shiny object. Fluoridated water used to be a communist conspiracy, now the Greens are agin it.
    Long story short, your guess is as good as mine, Nigel.

  151. I was born here and have lived here for almost 60 years now, but frankly I have no explanation to offer for the state of this nation at this point in time.
    Or, really, any point in time. The crazy has always been with us, it just finds new things to seize upon every generation or two.
    And/or, the old thing gets handed down to a new demographic to be their shiny object. Fluoridated water used to be a communist conspiracy, now the Greens are agin it.
    Long story short, your guess is as good as mine, Nigel.

  152. I have no explanation to offer for the state of this nation at this point in time.
    My guess (and it is only that) is this: In the middle of the 20th century, the Republicans were a center-right party, while Democrats were a center-left party. But both had a lot of members from the other end of the ideological spectrum. To take the obvious example: the reactionary Southerners among the relatively liberal Democrats.
    But starting circa 1970, the parties began to sort themselves into much more ideologically homogeneous groupings. The Southern Democrats moved to the Republican Party. The more liberal Republicans moved towards the Democrats. (We can argue seperately whether the latter moved voluntarily or where ejected.)
    As a result, it is far easier for both groups to talk only to themselves. And to only know the other side as caricatures, rather than interacting with them as human beings. (I saw something recently that suggested that part of the problem, in Washington, was the rising tendency of Congressmen to keep their families back in their home district instead of moving them to Washington. Which both cut Congress back to a 3 day work week, and eliminated the sort of social interactions which make working together possible. “It’s harder to demonize someone when your kids go to school together.”)
    That’s doubtless not the whole story. But it seems to account for a lot of what we see.

  153. “I saw something recently that suggested that part of the problem, in Washington, was the rising tendency of Congressmen to keep their families back in their home district instead of moving them to Washington. Which both cut Congress back to a 3 day work week, and eliminated the sort of social interactions which make working together possible. “It’s harder to demonize someone when your kids go to school together.”)
    “Suggested’? Did you read it here the 18 times I’ve cited it over the past 15 years? ;-}
    Newt Gingich, Frank Luntz, Dick Armey, and Tom Delay made this a disciplinary bullet point for the incoming freshman Republican landslide in the House in 1994.
    Republican politicians don’t want their children mingling with the cooties of liberal Democratic children.
    It’s like liberals are Jews, or Negroes, or Mexicans, or gay, which in fact we are, by coincidence. They’ve got the hate on full time.
    Thus the spectacle of these grown men bunking in their offices like f*cking Yoko Ono in the Abbey Road studios, so underpaid Congressional maintenance workers have to clean up after them. Or living like frat boys in a house together (sometimes sampling the local poontang;) while their families do whatever they do in the heartland.
    It persists to this day, in spades.
    So we have Paul Ryan’s sob story of needing to fly back to his home town on the weekends to see the kids on my goddamed f*cking ticket, and then fly back on my goddamned f*cking ticket to defeat any and all bills improving family leave.
    He can’t move the goddamned family to D.C. like every other f8cking American who takes a new job and the family goes with.
    I expect his wife is cheating on him, despite his dreamy blue eyes.
    Women have needs too.
    It’s part of the cloud of kicked up Republican horsesh*t visible from space over North America.
    111 work days schedules for 2016 to take citizen’s healthcare away or beg the President to blow something up overseas.
    http://wset.com/news/nation-world/congressional-calendar-house-in-session-111-days-next-year
    They get healthcare year round, 365 days a week, but no none thinks to bomb them, not that they would, this being America, born and weaned on violence.

  154. I have no explanation to offer for the state of this nation at this point in time.
    “Fluoridization of the water supply will work beyond our wildest dreams. Guaranteed.”
    -Henry A. Wallace

  155. But starting circa 1970, the parties began to sort themselves into much more ideologically homogeneous groupings.
    You omitted the part where the Democrats threw the the left out of their party: 1947-1960.

  156. “But starting circa 1970, the parties began to sort themselves into much more ideologically homogeneous groupings.”
    I think he also omitted the period from the mid 80’s through around 2008 and arguably after, when centrist Democrats constantly argued the Democrats had to tack to the right to win elections. Not saying that was always false–maybe in the 90’s you needed Clintonian triangulation to win. I’d like to think it wasn’t so, but maybe you did. But anyway, the Democrats as a whole weren’t exactly progressive champions of social democracy Bernie Sanders style during those years.

  157. The trouble is that neither Newt Gingrinch nor Bill Clinton elected themselves to high office. Neither did Steve King or Louie Gohmert. It wasn’t the gods who imposed Ted Cruz on the Senate, it was the voters.
    There have been all sorts of the-trouble-with-Washington-is theories, including the one that air conditioning the Capitol back in the 1930’s was the beginning of the end for self-government.
    But the basic problem has always been that we Americans are NOT exceptionally wise, exceptionally virtuous, or exceptionally engaged in civics. By chance alone, we are bound to elect idiots and assholes from time to time — and refuse to admit it was us who did it.
    –TP

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