Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

He really is that stupid.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Ah, the different things are different argument.

Republicans don’t trust women.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Let’s finish the job.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Let there be snark.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

You are here: Home / They read this garbage so you don’t have to

They read this garbage so you don’t have to

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One of my favorite things about having added all the reader blogs to my RSS reader is that some of the blogs are really good at summarizing the most recent dumb Halperin/Politico-type story so I can be aware of them without reading them. Zandar on the latest Palin-as-prez story:

  • Palin wins the GOP nomination.
  • Mike Bloomberg runs.
  • Bloomberg carries coasts:  NY, Cali, Florida, New England.
  • Palin wins the deep South.
  • Obama carries the rest.
  • The rest, unfortunately is not 270 electoral votes.
  • Matter goes to the House, which will be GOP controlled.
  • They vote in Palin.
  • World ends.

    • I agree with Zandar that none of this is likely to happen, but I’d like to see this merge with the Hillary-replaces-Biden stuff to form one master ridiculous election theory.

    Reader Interactions

    212Comments

    2. 2.

      Felonious Wench

      Tweety was talking about this on Hardball with President Carter. I kid you not, he rolled out this scenario. Was one of those times I instantly felt a headache hit and had to go pour a therapeutic glass of red wine.

    5. 5.

      Brian S (formerly Incertus)

      In a three-way race, isn’t it more likely that Palin would wind up winning in an electoral landslide since Bloomberg-Obama would end up doing to each other what Meek and Crist are doing to each other in Florida right now? I mean, as long as we’re talking about insano-scenarios, why not play it out all the way?

      If that happens, sign me up for one of those one-way ships to Mars that DARPA and NASA are supposedly looking at.

    6. 6.

      The Moar You Know

      I’m casting a write-in vote for Adolf Hitler, who was saner than any pundit working today.

    8. 8.

      Readabook

      I love the anti-semitic undertone. NY, Cali, and NE will vote for Bloomberg cause dem Jooos stick together…

    13. 13.

      Amir_Khalid

      Will you Americans please stop talking about President Palin? You’re just scaring the rest of the planet.

    14. 14.

      Mark S.

      The Senate picks the VP, right? Let’s say it picks Hillary, who becomes Sarah’s VP. Pumatastic!

    15. 15.

      Omnes Omnibus

      I have a scenario as well:
      1. Scientists breed talking gibbons.
      2. Pundits are replaced by talking gibbons.
      3. Political coverage improves.

      Mine is more realistic.

    17. 17.

      dmsilev

      Wow, a combination Unity ’12 / Palin as President scenario. Wank fodder for both David Broder *and* Rich Lowry. They said it couldn’t shouldn’t be done…

      dms

    18. 18.

      NR

      Really, though, Palin won’t be the 2012 GOP nominee. It’ll be someone who’s just as much of a rightwing nutjob as her, but without all her obvious negatives.

    19. 19.

      Sleeping Dog

      Funny, the author of the NY Mag piece knows nothing about the Iowa and NH primary voters, and blithely assumes Palin would win both states handily.

      First neither electorate simply hands over their votes, they expect the candidate to ask for the support, which means innumerable small events in every village in the state, can’t see Palin doing that. Second he lumps NH in with the Tea Party sympathizing states. None of the “Tea Party” candidates won a Repug primary, Guinta was the presumptive favorite in the First, Bass is a former incumbent in the Second and Kelly Ayotte fought off a Tea Party candidate challenge. While Palin has endorsed Ayotte, that endorsement actually has cost her support. Lastly the author is ignorant of the fact that the NH primary is open and with the Dem presidential primary likely a coronation, the independents will be taking part in the action on the R side of the ballot and we know what independents think of Sarah.

    21. 21.

      timb

      @Omnes Omnibus: Except for the last part. No way gibbons can out-savvy our pundits. Talking gibbons would probably have ideas and there is no way a pundit would ever admit to an idea.

    25. 25.

      John Bird

      That’s the stupidest shit I ever read.

      Perot ran for office because he didn’t care about his reputation or if he won, really, as long as he got to do what he wanted (anyone who ever dealt with his companies before 1992 will tell you the same).

      Bloomberg isn’t like this at all.

      Bloomberg would NEVER run against Obama for ANYTHING, including mayor of New York. Why? Because he likes to WIN.

    26. 26.

      timb

      @Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, I accidentally listened to a podcast of the Constitution Center this weekend and it was John Meachem droning on about his hagiography of Andrew Jackson and peppering his talk with all sorts of witticisms about how Bush was stupid, but Obama’s followers are sheep who thinks he’s Jesus. It was such perfect combination of smug “savviness,” above-it-all inanity that it reminded me how the “smart money” believes nothing.

      I assume the gibbons would be honest enough to have thoughts and judgment and surely no one in the upper media reaches has any of those things. In fact, believing something means you are not savvy enough to worship one of the worst Americans in history

    27. 27.

      cat48

      Obama is not going bipartisan because this morning Major from NJ did an article on McConnell & he has other plans for Obama:

      “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

      Barrasso is also on tape being asked what they are going to work on next yr and he said they had to get rid of Obama.

      So I guess Doug might get that impeachment

    29. 29.

      John Bird

      @Readabook:

      I love the anti-semitic undertone. NY, Cali, and NE will vote for Bloomberg cause dem Jooos stick together…

      The thing that pushes this into Elders-of-Zion territory for me is the state you left out: Florida.

      There is no reason for anyone to believe that Imaginary Bloomberg would carry Florida except if you think that Jews control everything and are all friends with each other.

    31. 31.

      JCT

      Wow, just imagine the history books. The US elects it’s first black president 150 years after slavery is abolished and the electorate responds by replacing him with someone who wants to repeal the 20th century.

      Holy crap.

    32. 32.

      Mark S.

      Why do the gibbons have to be able to talk for them to be a vast improvement over our current pundits?

    33. 33.

      Bill H

      Heiliman wrote “Game Change,” a book of unattributed gossip which Tweety regarded as a “blockbuster” and “one of the greatest books ever written.” He was on Tweety’s show to engage in a lengthy discussion of his 2012 election scenario creation, and it was definitely “dumb and dumber” seeking the lowest common denominator.

      Palin carries California. Good God.

    34. 34.

      Hal

      Jesus, again with Bloomberg? If he could win in a Presidential run, he would have tried it already.

    36. 36.

      BH

      The Bloomberg component makes perfect sense. Because old, short, effeminate billionaires fare so well in American politics.

    38. 38.

      JCT

      @BH:

      Because old, short, effeminate billionaires fare so well in American politics

      Especially when they come from New York.

      Really, so hopelessly inane.

    40. 40.

      John Bird

      @Bnut:

      Political reporting is like a choose your own adventure book.

      Well, used to be, only chumps made predictions, because then you’d look like a fool to your fellows and readers when you were wrong.

      Now, making a prediction that is sure to be wrong builds your name in the game, as long as it is a really gutsy prediction that favors someone with money.

      That’s the “game change” to me: there is nothing more appealing to media consumers now than a blatant ass-kiss.

      And so now, only chumps don’t make predictions.

    41. 41.

      eemom

      @John Bird:

      There is no reason for anyone to believe that Imaginary Bloomberg would carry Florida except if you think that Jews control everything and are all friends with each other.

      normally I would agree, except that somebody once said something about Al Gore picking Joe Lieberman cuz he supposedly could “deliver” Florida, and, well, we all know how that turned out.

    44. 44.

      JenJen

      Speaking of Halperin, I don’t know if anybody else caught the last hour of “Morning Joe” today, when Major Garrett was the guest, and they were talking about the National Journal’s interview with Mitch McConnell where he says, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term President.”

      Sure, that’s a no-duh to most of us, but I was a little surprised when Scarborough took such umbrage to the comment. Next thing you know, Mark Halperin tries to correct Scarborough, insisting that McConnell meant that in a merely political context, that he wasn’t implying that the GOP wouldn’t work with the President, or some other such drivel; he was completely negating the actual and obvious meaning of the sentence. He then read the quote out loud and added the word “politically” as though it were part of the quote.

      “But it doesn’t say that,” said Scarborough, reading the quote verbatim again, from the magazine. And Halperin just sat there. And I’ll bet he’ll be on the show next week, too.

      Yeah, yeah, I shouldn’t watch. But I watch this garbage, so you don’t have to. :-)

    52. 52.

      John Bird

      Unity ’10 boggles my mind.

      We actually have the Village deciding that since they can continue to sell bland, inaccurate columns to dying newspapers, they are perfectly poised to sell a bland, inaccurate political solution to the country.

      They’ve completely mistaken sycophantic exploitation of their old-school names by the newer media as some kind of recognition of their continued relevance. They don’t realize that they’re on the wane, and that faux-centrism has been completely replaced by strident partisanship. (Of course, they also think their ‘centrism’ is real, so…)

      It’s like deciding to double-down investments in a pager company in 1996.

    53. 53.

      mcmillan

      So how’s this for an attempt at the master ridiculous election theory:

      Because Obama is so out of touch, he doesn’t recognize the greatness of replacing Biden, which prompts Clinton to run as an independent with Bloomberg as VP (which gets around all you naysayers who think he wouldn’t step down as mayor, since this could set him up to be in a better position to run for president later).

      That awesome display of bipartisanship pulls in additional votes, but not enough to make up for splitting the vote, so the election goes to the house which picks Palin for president.

    54. 54.

      John Bird

      @DougJ:

      Halperin is a Randian. (I’d say “a crude Randian” but there is no other type.) He will always default to the Republicans as long as they are the ones in power on the right.

      That’s also the answer to why people like Greenspan, etc. aren’t part of the Libertarian Party: because by the inverted Black-Mass morality of Randian thought, the Republicans are better Libertarians than the Libertarians because THEY HAVE ALL THE MONEY.

    56. 56.

      rob!

      “And I looked, and he opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake. And the sun became as black as sack cloth, and the moon became as blood.”

    57. 57.

      jl

      “Because old, short, effeminate billionaires fare so well in American politics.”

      At this rate, that sounds like what will be the latter part of Palin’s career. Which is mean, but I think it will be true. The billionaire part depends on her marketing acumen over the next two or three election cycles.

      And poor Newt will die a bitter man. Or, even bitterer man.

    59. 59.

      John Bird

      @mcmillan:

      You have to throw in something about McCain voters.

      “McCain voters, as we know, included a large chunk of female Democrats who would have voted for Hillary if she had been the Democratic candidate. These voters would surely back a Unity ’12 campaign, or, barring that, Sarah Palin.”

      That speaks to the sort of person who likes this game, it’s an oft-repeated lie, and it contains so little fact that no one reasonable would want to waste their time refuting it.

    61. 61.

      Comrade Mary

      I’m a lot less optimistic about next week’s elections than I was yesterday after seeing an ignorant, innumerate, hateful “populist” get voted into the Toronto mayor’s office tonight.

      Rob Ford was a joke when he got in the race months ago, jumped into a big lead in the polls over the summer, the centrist “hold your nose” candidate pulled up even with him a couple of weeks ago — and then Ford romped away with a win tonight instead of winning or losing in a squeaker.

      In the end, the liberals of this fairly liberal city didn’t have anyone they felt they could vote for and win, the conservatives thought that Ford (with an incredibly persistent and annoying GOTV campaign) was their guy, through and through, and somehow, a bunch of mushy middlers voted for the brand name they recognized, the guy who got so much press, even for his gaffes and screw ups, because, well, he’s them. Hell, even my smart relatives out in the suburbs thought that Ford was the obvious candidate, and they wondered why everyone was picking on him.

      All of you down there, please GOTFV. Drag everybody sane out to vote with you next week. Because tight polls in times like these don’t necessarily mean a single damn thing.

    65. 65.

      cckids

      @Bill H: I saw a brief bit of this on Tweety, as well. But I’m having a busy day, so after a brief WTF moment, was thankful for the good laugh & moved on.

    67. 67.

      arguingwithsignposts

      @DougJ:

      I had an exchange with McMegan on her blog wherein she was somewhat reasonable and polite with me, so I felt bad keeping up the title mockery.

      So you’re becoming part of the juicebox mafia now. I knew it! they’ve co-opted DougJ!

      Did you get her to admit her bus conversation with the native in her newly gentrified neighborhood was a Friedmanesque literary device?

    68. 68.

      Rathskeller

      Good comments, even if on a fundamentally ridiculous scenario. One thing I would like to hear, from someone with a working crystal ball, is exactly how quickly Palin is out of the running in 2012. It seems so clear to me that she cannot create the type of an organization that can win, nor does she have the personal stamina to achieve a nomination.

      But does not she not run at all for president? Does she get blown out in NH and IA? Do the sharks that run in SC get her at last? Who can she blame for the disaster to come? Does she want to create a Rush-like role as king-maker, without any responsibilities?

    71. 71.

      BR

      @Rathskeller:

      She can win in IA if she wants to. She has the teatard stump speech down, incoherence and all. Sure she doesn’t have an organization, but in IA GOP primaries are driven by the evangelical vote.

      It’s in NH she’ll get a run for her money, either from Romney or from a yet unknown contender (Pence or someone like that). I know there’s some weird obsession with Thune as a dark horse candidate, but he’s so far off the radar that I don’t see it happening – GOPers don’t go off the beaten path that easily.

    72. 72.

      John Bird

      Here’s my own bullshit version, assembled from folk wisdom of the last few years.

      I think it’s WAY cooler than Friedman’s, because people could tout it as the Gospel truth all the way into the conventions:

      1) The Republicans are going to nominate someone other than Palin, like Mitt Romney or something.
      2) BUT IT DOESN’T MATTER! Because the convention compromise will make a Tea Partier the vice-presidential candidate, and as we all know from Bush and Cheney, the vice president is the one who sets policy.
      3) This will allow the Republicans to take the White House handily, due to Obama’s lack of popularity (by 2012 he will be down to, like, 15%).
      4) Especially if the Tea Party person is a girl, and it will be a girl. This will get the Hillary voters, who are girls.
      5) Then, Palin, notably also a girl, will rule from behind the scenes. Sarah Palin, secret government of the United States.

      I guarantee you that if a pundit made this prediction and stuck to it all the way up to the summer of 2012, no one would notice if it didn’t happen, because it would get drowned out by the convention blitz, as if anyone ever did anyway. And he would $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

    74. 74.

      Anne Laurie

      @Readabook:
      __

      NY, Cali, and NE will vote for Bloomberg cause dem Jooos smart / sane people stick together…

      Fixed that for you.

      Also, Bloomberg is a native New Englander (born in Medford, MA — just a few miles away from Mike Dukakis’s Brookline) and he’s established himself as a “real” New Yorker. That wouldn’t help him with the upstate appleknockers, but it might well appeal to the more urban portions of California. Not that Bloomberg’s gonna run in 2012, but he’s not too old or soiled that I’d bet against him ever having considered what he’d do about redecorating the Oval Office.

    76. 76.

      arguingwithsignposts

      @Anne Laurie:
      Bloomberg would never run. I have nothing to base this on other than the fact that he seems to really like running New York, and his statements to that effect. He’s a big fish in a small pond, and doesn’t seem to give a shit about national politics on the scale it would take to run for president.

      Maybe I’m wrong, but I just don’t see it.

    78. 78.

      Jim, Once

      Does she get blown out in NH and IA?

      I don’t know about NH – but she will get blown out of Iowa. I’ve worked Iowa politics since the late ’70’s. We really don’t want her. Remember – we have two important qualities here: a) we’re educated, and b) we vote.

      in IA GOP primaries are driven by the evangelical vote.

      Not really – western Iowa, yes. Des Moines and points east, north and south of there, it’s just not so.

    79. 79.

      DougJ

      @arguingwithsignposts:

      I always cut people slack temporarily if they respond to me.

      She claims the bus story is true, but she admits she shouldn’t have written that stuff about protesters getting beaten with 2x4s.

    80. 80.

      eemom

      @DougJ:

      I had an exchange with McMegan on her blog wherein she was somewhat reasonable and polite with me, so I felt bad keeping up the title mockery.

      and THAT, is the thanks I get for months of overlooking the English major heartburn that the grammatical outrage of

      by DougJ is the business and economics editor of Balloon Juice

      (grammatical outrage emphasis added) caused me to suffer, until I finally forced myself to get past it and appreciate the whimsical charm of such grammatical outrage…….thereby selling out my most profoundly held linguistic principles in order to be a fucking TEAM PLAYER on this blog…….

      only to have the entire exercise rendered for naught because the notorious McMegan, who I’ve never read but according to all you people plus TBogg is second to none in her persistent idiocy, said something NICE to DougJ once.

      This is a godless and unjust universe.

    81. 81.

      John Bird

      @Anne Laurie:

      What I’m curious about is why a New York mayor who was well known nationally and popular with conservatives didn’t have a chance, but a New York mayor who’s poorly known nationally and unpopular with conservatives is supposed to be hot stuff.

    83. 83.

      Linda Featheringill

      Bloomberg carrying New England:

      Daughter was stationed at the Navy base in Maine. I asked her opinion and she said the Mainers would not vote for Bloomberg regardless of his stand on whatever because he is too, too, too NYC.

    84. 84.

      jl

      Well, OK, if we are going there, I predict that Michelle and Todd will leave their respective politics as usual mates, marry each other, and run as a coupled ticket, offering a new vision, a new compromise centrist path, yet one that will make David Broder cry.

      Their media campaign consists of infomercials.

      Meanwhile, in order to appeal to their base, the Republicans finance a new sport; NASCAR hunting bowl, But Mitt is crippled in a tragic accident while in his shooting cage on top of his NASCAR, when his VP drives it into the gutter during a race.

      Which, provides an opening for the Democrats, who were in disarray, having planned to run Oprah and Clooney, but are obviously, and expectedly, made to look like fools by the Michelle/Todd run. So they run Lieberman and Lincoln as being their best bet.

      The result is that no one wins, and through obscure political wrangling in the House, the 931st entry on the line of succession is chosen, US Geological Survey. And we enter a golden epoch of enlightened technocratic rule.

      Until the Tyrant emerges from the seismic mapping department.

      Yeah, I’ll go with that. When can I go on the JoeShow?

    86. 86.

      John Bird

      @Omnes Omnibus:

      I’ve mulled it over and begun to encourage right-wingers to Go Galt, since, as jobs aren’t protected in the United States, the professional class will immediately be restaffed by the left. That is, me.

    88. 88.

      Davis X. Machina

      But does not she not run at all for president? Does she get blown out in NH and IA.

      In NH. Ask President Phil Gramm.

      Bloomberg. $183/vote (2009 re-election in NYC), times 65 million votes…. $12 billion, give or take. And no party machine, or army of footsoldiers. So he has to pay retail.

      Na. Ga. Happen

    89. 89.

      Martin

      @DougJ: She wouldn’t feel bad adding up Cole’s pets and insisting that he had 37 of them, and still calling herself an economics expert.

      If being nice once made you immune from mockery, we’d view all Republicans with immortal respect.

    90. 90.

      Linda Featheringill

      @Sleeping Dog:

      Funny, the author of the NY Mag piece knows nothing about the Iowa and NH primary voters, and blithely assumes Palin would win both states handily.

      Good point. I don’t think that Iowa would ever, ever go for Palin. Don’t know that much about NH.

    91. 91.

      Mark S.

      @Rathskeller:

      She ain’t gonna run. She’s far too lazy. Though I would love to see her try to take her diva act to NH and Iowa. I would also love to see her come up with a different excuse each week when she doesn’t participate in any debates.

    92. 92.

      arguingwithsignposts

      @DougJ:

      And I was young, and lots of things seem inappropriately funny when you’re young–in your mid-twenties, empathy is often largely theoretical. This is perhaps the only good thing about aging.

      That is an atrocious article. Empathy is largely theoretical for McMegan *today*!

    93. 93.

      John Bird

      @Linda Featheringill:

      NH will never go for Palin. I would put money on that, serious money. It’s an open primary, in a year when the Democratic candidate is already decided, in a state that’s only right-wing for New England.

    95. 95.

      John Bird

      @arguingwithsignposts:

      As someone in my mid-twenties, the people for whom empathy is ‘largely theoretical’ are generally tweedy kill-joy libertarians like McArdle. The other right-wingers don’t deal in theory.

    97. 97.

      jl

      @eemom: I did not overlook the grammatical horror. And I was damned, ridiculed, disgraced, rejected, reviled, renounced, and repudiated and reprobated for noting it. Admittedly, this was done in a very short and bland comment by one commenter, but it is the principle of the thing.

    99. 99.

      John Bird

      @Martin:

      Not a bad idea for her, really.

      It’s one side-effect of the national far-right machine I’ve described here repeatedly: a failed and marginalized political campaign is now often as good a move financially as a successful and inclusive one. And it’s far, far easier.

      I say we call it being “in the O’Donnell business”.

    102. 102.

      ellid

      Even if he runs as a third party candidate, which I doubt, Bloomberg the New Yorker stands as much chance of winning New England as my spayed cat has of birthing a litter.

    104. 104.

      Omnes Omnibus

      @John Bird: A failed campaign also severely diminishes the risk that one might have to come through with some kind of results.

      Edited because I can’t spell today.

    105. 105.

      Martin

      @John Bird: Yep. She’ll get to fly around in a private jet for at least a year, free hotel rooms, meals, kids can come, all the bendy straws and fuck-me boots she can possibly consume. And she’ll make everyone do the hard work as she won’t care about the outcome one way or another.

      And when she loses, by whatever means, she’ll have a permanent seat on the Sunday shows just like McCain got, and just fail upward one more time.

    106. 106.

      Davis X. Machina

      @eemom:
      @jl:
      adquiescite, omnes — lingua defuncta esse nulla res molesta.
      (Chill everyone — being a dead language isn’t that big a deal….)

    108. 108.

      Morbo

      Mataconis pimped this today as well. I couldn’t be buggered to look if he was pro or con, but he floated it.

    109. 109.

      John Bird

      @Omnes Omnibus:

      A solid point, and one I hadn’t considered.

      E.g., who cares if Palin quit being governor, or if she wins any primaries? She already screwed her party as VP candidate. The only people who are still going to buy all her t-shirts and action figures are people who don’t really expect her to win anything ever again because “they” won’t let her.

      And those people alone are gonna make lots of money for ANYONE who jumps onto a Palin ’12 campaign.

      It’s the full commodification of the paranoid style.

    111. 111.

      Hunter Gathers

      1 – Palin wins GOPer nom

      2 – Bloomberg announces run

      3 – Obama replaces Biden with Hillary

      4 – Bloomberg suspends run after spending half a billion and never breaking 10% in polls

      5 – Obama replaces Hillary with Biden

      6 – Palin suspends run after getting drunk and running over one of her kids while driving her Hummer

      7 – Bloomberg re-enters race after getting 12% in a Rasmussen poll

      8 – Obama replaces Biden with Jack Conway

      9 – Palin re-enters race, running with a ‘librul media made me run over Bristol’ slogan

      10 – Obama replaces Jack Conway with Joe Manchin

      11 – Bloomberg drops out again after spending 2 billion and falling to less than 5% in Gallup poll

      12 – Palin suspends campaign again after getting stoned on cocaine before a town hall and going on a Michael Richards-type rant.

      13 – Obama replaces Manchin with a bag of pretzels.

      14 – Bloomberg re-enters race, evidently with nothing better to do.

      15 – Palin re-enters race, names Glenn Beck as her VP.

      16 – Obama eats bag of pretzels, names Hillary VP.

      17 – Bloomberg names a philly cheesesteak as VP, trying to up his vote total in PA.

      18 – All 3 debates cancelled, Palin won’t show, and Bloomberg is caught having argument with philly cheesesteak over the sandwiches’ recent anti-muslim statements.

      19 – Lrrr of the planet Omicron Persei 8 invades, names self Emperor of Earth.

      20 – Lrrr vacates throne, after contracting an almost fatal case of gas after eating Bloomberg’s cheesesteak after the sandwich insults him. Obama takes throne, still can’t get public option through Galactic Senate.

      21 – God takes pity on the Galaxy, and promptly destroys it. Will try again after taking a long deserved vacation in the 8th dimension.

    112. 112.

      Anne Laurie

      @John Bird: __

      What I’m curious about is why a New York mayor who was well known nationally and popular with conservatives didn’t have a chance, but a New York mayor who’s poorly known nationally and unpopular with conservatives is supposed to be hot stuff.

      “Hot stuff” will never describe Mike Bloomberg, but he’s the sort of low-key reasonable person who grows on voters. Rudy Noun-Verb-911, on the other hand, seems to become less attractive the longer people are exposed to him… just ask his ex-wives. Don’t know that Bloomberg has ever seriously considered a Presidential run, but any professional politician with Bloomberg’s resume and personal fortune is gonna have had the idea of running suggested to him. Not in 2012, but in 2016 or 2020, if the present political system survives & the early primaries are divided between teabaggers who don’t think Palin was mean & crazy enough, robber-baron Repubs torn between Willard Romney and Eric Prince Jeb Bush, seventeen flavors of Democratic splittists arguing about whose special agenda is most important, and a double handful of vanity-campaign millionaires (cough * Ron Paul * cough)… I can see Mike Bloomberg’s associates convincing him that a “Vote for Me, I’m Not Hateful or Insane” could score a Clintonian 42% of the electoral college votes.

    113. 113.

      Brian S (formerly Incertus)

      @eemom:

      normally I would agree, except that somebody once said something about Al Gore picking Joe Lieberman cuz he supposedly could “deliver” Florida, and, well, we all know how that turned out.

      Strangely enough, the DNC picked Lieberman as much for the Cuban population as for the Jewish population, even though there was no chance in hell of getting them to vote for Dems after the Elian Gonzales situation.

      Not that it mattered. By the time the election happened, Jeb! and Katherine Harris had already gotten enough brown people off the rolls to make it close, and that’s all it took, it turns out.

    114. 114.

      Mike in NC

      I know there’s some weird obsession with Thune as a dark horse candidate, but he’s so far off the radar that I don’t see it happening – GOPers don’t go off the beaten path that easily.

      Jim Bob DeMint in 2012. Pray for it!

      The Founding fathers favored slavery and genocide. Obviously God-fearing men.

      See above.

    115. 115.

      John Bird

      @Martin:

      I think one possible weakness of the Tea Party movement is how destructive they are. They’re of the “destroy to build” school.

      This means that they’re already co-opted by the time they emerge, because they wouldn’t be publicly visible if that hadn’t happened already.

      In turn, it means that they don’t really WANT or EXPECT to win anything. They want to say their piece and then go down in a blaze of glory. Which is really bad for the country, because it can go from bombings/shootings to worse things.

      But it also means that Fox News, etc. may act as a valve for these people’s fervor and ideas, at least outside of the small gaggle of motivated, violent nuts. As long as they think they’re always screwed no matter what they do because of a huge conspiracy against them, they may never get off their asses and do anything about it.

      Of course, if they do get off their asses, say, under a genuinely charismatic leader, they may destroy the entire country. It’s a gamble.

    116. 116.

      Rich

      After reading both the summary and the real New York piece, I’m inclined to think Minnesotans will be seeing an actual trial of this theory this fall.

      Mark Dayton is the sane but unabashedly liberal Democrat. He has a long history in Minnesota politics, has a famous name, and is a known quantity as someone elected multiple times in statewide elections.

      Tom Emmer is the insane Republican candidate. The highest electoral office he has been elected to is to the lower house of the Minnesota Legislature. He once claimed that restaurant servers made over $100K in tips.

      In the center is the sane businessman Tom Horner of the Independence Party, trying to split the difference. A kinda-sorta former Republican with endorsements from folks of both parties.

      Election day is still to be held, and the parallels are far less than perfect, but Dayton is leading in all the polls. Frankly, I think that the sane liberal you know will win every time, and everyone knows Obama. Also, I think this speculation is far less lame than the “President Palin” piece.

    117. 117.

      Zandar

      But I don’t want to be a Mayan. I wanted to at least see my niece bring home a nice boy (or girl, hey it’s 2010) and see my brother’s head explode.

      But nooooooooooo now I’m gonna die in 2012 in the Moosepocalypse.

    118. 118.

      GregB

      Re: Sarah Peron.

      I heard this dildonic theory earlier in the day. It’s just a bunch of asshats who want to rile up rubes.

      That’s all.

    119. 119.

      John Bird

      @Anne Laurie:

      Well, I agree that if we all go insane in a decade and Michael Bloomberg stays squeaky clean from now until then, then yeah, maybe he’ll get run and get elected in 2020.

      But that’s a lot of “what if”s.

    120. 120.

      eemom

      let me just add, that ONLY the prospect of a resurgence in psycho-sicko Impeachment 101 Pronography, keeps me from pointing out How Fucking Stoopid it is for anyone to utter a sentence that includes the words Palin and President.

    121. 121.

      John Bird

      @Rich:

      Wait, since when is Minnesota politics reflective of America when it comes to independent politicians?

      Isn’t it the very definition of an exception to the rule?

      Or are you saying “even the independent-friendly Minnesota” here?

    122. 122.

      arguingwithsignposts

      @DougJ:
      McMegan uses her typical debating skills in that section of comments. I didn’t find her okay, but your mileage obviously varies. I found her condescending, snide, and typical of her writing style.

      Why she still has a job at the Atlantic is a mystery to me (or rather, something I don’t want to contemplate because it would depress me even more).

    123. 123.

      jimBOB

      she’ll have a permanent seat on the Sunday shows just like McCain got

      I don’t see this happening; she’s been burned by non-Fox interviewers, and even though my pet cat could probably negotiate the Sunday Morning roundtables (at least on the reporters’ side), Palin must know she’d f it up if she had to extemporize with Villagers. She’s not one of them, and they’d let her know it.

    125. 125.

      WereBear

      This is fascinating because I keep asking myself: Who else do they have?

      The Mittster, who has already failed to secure the nomination and is a member of a nonRepub religion in any case?

      Thune? This cycle’s Pawlenty?

      The Huckster has his own Fox show, Rudy has passed his sell by date, and the thought of a Boehner presidental run is really too horrible even for the Artificial Heartland.

      No wonder wild and fanciful is dominating speculation. It’s what’s for dinner!

    126. 126.

      General Stuck

      @eemom:

      let me just add, that ONLY the prospect of a resurgence in psycho-sicko Impeachment 101 Pronography,

      Yea, just wait till the House wingnuts pass a resolution demanding Obama’s dna be tested to make sure he ain’t a terrist and non American. And it won’t matter one whit, the fact you can’t test dna for that./

    128. 128.

      Dennis SGMM

      @timb:

      “Give me eighty good men and I can ride through the whole Sioux nation.”

      -Captain William J. Fetterman, 2nd Battalion, 18th Infantry, USA.

      Captain Fetterman and his entire command (Ironically totaling exactly eighty men) road out of fort Phil Kearney on 21 December, 1866 in a reaction to the attack by the Sioux (Crazy Horse, allied with Red Cloud) on a a party of woodcutters. Against orders, Captain Fetterma, against orders, led his troops out of sight and out of range of support by the other troops stationed at the fort. Fetterman was lured into an ambush. Later estimates said that it took the Sioux fighters twenty minutes to wipe out Fetterman and his entire command.

      This was nearly 10 years before the Little Big Horn, 100 years before Vietnam, and 135 years before the beginning of the war in Afghanistan.

      We never, ever, learn.

    134. 134.

      Kilkee

      Although Palin should get clobbered in NH, I could definitely see Dems in an open GOP primary rushing to vote for her in a desperate attempt to get the worst possible candidate for the GOP. And to kick Willard in the nuts. Also, too.

    135. 135.

      Brian S (formerly Incertus)

      @eemom: Ha! Not Cuban, but very very Cuban-friendly, as in make-the-embargo-tougher-consider-toppling-Fidel friendly. He was the go-to guy in the Senate for the Cuban caucus in the 90’s. Great book titled Cuba Confidential by Louise Bardach that spells it all out.

    140. 140.

      J. Michael Neal

      @Rich:

      Mark Dayton is the sane but unabashedly liberal Democrat. He has a long history in Minnesota politics, has a famous name, and is a known quantity as someone elected multiple times in statewide elections.

      And boring. Good god is Mark Dayton boring. He’s Harry Reid boring. He’s senior golf boring. He makes Amy Klobuchar look like the life of the party.

      When will the DFL stop nominating these 1990s nonentities? There have to be some other people that haven’t run before that we can start putting into the ring.

      Did I mention that Mark Dayton is boring?

    141. 141.

      Svensker

      @Brian S (formerly Incertus):

      He was the go-to guy in the Senate for the Cuban caucus in the 90’s.

      My alternate reality nightmare is that Gore was elected in 2000 and then assassinated shortly thereafter. By 2003 we had nuked Iran. It’s weird to have a situation where you’re grateful Dubya was prez.

    143. 143.

      John Bird

      @WereBear:

      It’s always like this. We rarely know who’s going to get nominated, in my experience.

      Two years before the election last time around, the media had a decent idea about the Democrats’ top slate, and were really wrong about the Republicans. I was skeptical that Hillary would even run before she announced, in large part because the media seemed so sure that she was the candidate to beat.

      People actually don’t remember that shortly after 2000, everyone was clucking about how Lieberman was the front-runner in 2004. In 2002, well, some people saw Kerry as the guy, and some people didn’t, and honestly everyone was busy thinking about WARTIME and MUST WE TORTURE. Wesley Clark was being floated. It was madness.

      My prediction is that because we don’t see any strong Republican candidate right now, either one of the not-strong candidates will become “strong” in the media’s eyes, or someone we have never heard of will run and win.

      Which is not a prediction at all, as it covers every possibility short of nuclear war or military coup, and that’s my point.

    145. 145.

      Wile E. Quixote

      @eemom:

      normally I would agree, except that somebody once said something about Al Gore picking Joe Lieberman cuz he supposedly could “deliver” Florida, and, well, we all know how that turned out.

      The problem with picking Lieberman was that Gore never asked who Joe Lieberman would be delivering Florida to. If he had he probably would have picked someone else as his VP, like Kerry, or one of those talking gibbons, or even a non-talking gibbon for that matter and would have done better in 2000.

    147. 147.

      Rich

      @John Bird:

      Well, I’ll grant you that Minnesota has not exactly been typical over the last 25 years, but an actual election seems like a sturdier reed to hang a theory on than: if this improbable thing, and this other improbable thing, plus this nearly impossible thing, then President Sarah Palin!

    149. 149.

      eemom

      maybe this would be a good time for a good old fashioned, classic “2000: All Ralph Nader’s Fault, Or Not? Discuss.” thread. You know, just to get our minds off all this bad 2010 shit.

    150. 150.

      Wile E. Quixote

      @WereBear:

      The Huckster has his own Fox show, Rudy has passed his sell by date, and the thought of a Boehner presidental run is really too horrible even for the Artificial Heartland.

      The Huckster is dead, dead, dead. Whatever presidential hopes he may have harbored died last November when Maurice Clemmons gunned down four cops in Lakewood, Washington. Clemmons had been pardoned by Huckabee, over the objections of just about everyone and went on to commit more crimes and ultimately to kill four cops. If the Huckster runs there’s no way in Hell that any other Republican candidate wouldn’t go after him in a way that would make Willie Horton look like a tempest in a teapot.

      I’d like to see the Huckster run though, just because I’d want to see him and his supporters exposed to the full fury of teabagger wrath over the fact that Huckabee pardoned a black felon who went on to murder four police officers.

    151. 151.

      John Bird

      Remember in post-election 2004 when everyone was talking about how the FIRST thing the Democrats did wrong was to abandon their only successful post-Nixon strategy of nominating Southern conservatives?

      GOOD TIMES.

    152. 152.

      John Bird

      @Rich:

      I cannot argue with that.

      To me, it’s just, y’know, that there is literally no apparatus that would allow a third-party or independent candidate to win the Presidency without displacing an existing party permanently.

    155. 155.

      morzer

      They didn’t discuss Matoko-chan leading the Hacker Nation to glorious triumph? Clearly not a serious analysis!

    156. 156.

      Yutsano

      @Wile E. Quixote:

      If the Huckster runs there’s no way in Hell that any other Republican candidate wouldn’t go after him in a way that would make Willie Horton look like a tempest in a teapot.

      The linguistic gymnastics Huck would have to go through to justify that to appease the teabaggers would be worth the price of admission alone. Plus he’s had the bug once, I can’t honestly see his ego passing up another opportunity to take a bite at the apple. cf Willard Romney.

    157. 157.

      Joseph Nobles

      Palin is the surprise winner of a stealth write-in campaign for AK Senate (SUCK ON THIS, Lisa Murkowski!). Todd does a lap dance for Majority Leader McConnell, and she gets an unorthodox appointment for President Pro Tempore of the Senate. Next January, she’s struck down by a miserable case of H1N1 and cannot attend the State of the Union. Joe Miller commandeers a large airplane and crashes it into the Capitol Building during the speech, killing Obama, Biden, and Speaker Boehner along with most of the Federal Government.

      January 27, 2011 – Sarah Palin is sworn in as President, Trig on her hip.

    160. 160.

      Omnes Omnibus

      Deleted for redundancy. FYWP won’t let me fix the previous one. How the hell does one hit a triple?

    161. 161.

      MikeJ

      @Yutsano:

      Plus he’s had the bug once, I can’t honestly see his ego passing up another opportunity to take a bite at the apple. cf Willard Romney.

      He’s been making money since leaving politics, something he wasn’t able to do with both hands before. Many people would find that being rich and famous and listened to by conservatives even better than actually having to deliver and making less than a half mil a year.

    162. 162.

      Martin

      @Kilkee: No, she was a MoveOn member, but the thugs were SEIU plants. Nothing is more vicious and underhanded than a bunch of nurses with good pensions.

      Who ever heard of a bunch of wingnuts curbstomping people in Kentucky, anyway?

    163. 163.

      John Bird

      Anonymous will force Pawlenty as the Republican candidate because it’s the only way they can spell “PISS HAT” on Florida’s ballot using the first letters of each candidate’s last name.

      Trust me, by 2012, we will all be talking about Piss Hat. This joke will be hilarious.

    164. 164.

      John Bird

      @MikeJ:

      They have already all figured it out. What are Miller, O’Donnell, Rand, and even Angle actually running for in 2010?

      The same thing Sarah Palin is running for in 2010.

      They are running for the office of United States Glennbeck.

    166. 166.

      Wile E. Quixote

      @WereBear:

      The Mittster, who has already failed to secure the nomination and is a member of a nonRepub religion in any case?

      The Mittster running would also be fun to watch because it would be sure to trigger an evangelical v. Mormon holy war in the Republican party. Evangelical Christoids hate, hate, hate Mormons and Mormonism. They regard it as a cult and consider Mormons to be no better than Muslims. So if the Mittster wins the nomination you have the prospect of lots of Christoids staying home and not voting or voting for a third party candidate. If the Mittster loses the nomination because the Republicans unleashed a whole passel of Christoid hate and crazy you have the possibility of Mormon voters in Utah, Idaho, Nevada and Arizona just staying home and not voting.

    168. 168.

      Yutsano

      @Omnes Omnibus: Nam ryoho renge kyo…

      @MikeJ: The only issue there is he’s not THE conservative. Being President allows a huge and nearly unlimited amount of control, and it just burns poor ol’ Huck that he can’t impose his good Christian will upon this great nation and lead all the lambs to either paradise or slaughter.

    169. 169.

      morzer

      @General Stuck:

      Nah. She got so thoroughly mocked on the other thread that she’s curled up with her Magic Unicorn coloring book and a very seriously hurting butt.

    171. 171.

      sven

      @John Bird: Wouldn’t random chance have produced a fire breathing liberal by now? It’s the rare case where I believe Intelligent Design better explains the evidence!

    172. 172.

      Martin

      @General Stuck: Crosstabs on that poll are pretty awesome.

      88% moderate or conservative.
      31/65 Approve/Dis for Obama.
      52/40 prefer GOP/Dem control Congress.
      55% Dems are too liberal (lies working),
      33% GOP too conservative (19% GOP too liberal!)
      55% Democrat, 35% Republican
      94% White
      72% are 45 or older

      Talk about not representative of the nation and not keeping up with the Democratic party.

    174. 174.

      Anne Laurie

      @Dennis SGMM: __

      Captain Fetterman and his entire command (Ironically totaling exactly eighty men) road out of fort Phil Kearney on 21 December, 1866 in a reaction to the attack by the Sioux (Crazy Horse, allied with Red Cloud) on a a party of woodcutters. Against orders, Captain Fetterma, against orders, led his troops out of sight and out of range of support by the other troops stationed at the fort. Fetterman was lured into an ambush. Later estimates said that it took the Sioux fighters twenty minutes to wipe out Fetterman and his entire command.
      __
      This was nearly 10 years before the Little Big Horn, 100 years before Vietnam, and 135 years before the beginning of the war in Afghanistan.

      Sooo, the 101st Fighting Chairborne could also be called Fetterman’s Forces?

    176. 176.

      MarkusR

      I’m already planning on binge drinking on Nov 2nd. Ah well. Don’t forget to shop on the 1st!

    177. 177.

      Anne Laurie

      @Joseph Nobles: __

      Next January, she’s struck down by a miserable case of H1N1 and cannot attend the State of the Union. Joe Miller commandeers a large airplane and crashes it into the Capitol Building during the speech, killing Obama, Biden, and Speaker Boehner along with most of the Federal Government.

      That’s why the rules are that at least one member of the Cabinet doesn’t attend the SOTU in person.

      But speaking of Joe Miller ‘s Joke Book, has anybody unlocked the mystery of his Army disability pension yet?

    179. 179.

      morzer

      @Anne Laurie:

      Attacking woodcutters doesn’t normally indicate very welcoming feelings. What’s your beef with Fetterman? Yes, he did something foolish, and paid a price – but he’s hardly comparable to the cowardly neocon hawks who slobber with joy at prospect of sending other people to die for their idiotic causes.

    180. 180.

      The Moar You Know

      I’d like to see the Huckster run though, just because I’d want to see him and his supporters exposed to the full fury of teabagger wrath over the fact that Huckabee pardoned a black felon who went on to murder four police officers.

      @Wile E. Quixote: This, and the rest of your comment too. He’s fucking done in politics, period, save for the pundit tour and his stupid talk show.

      He’s been playing with fire with the Arkansas parole situation for a long time, but so long as he was letting out murderers who raped Clinton relatives and killed single women no one gave a shit. But Clemmons was a bad, bad, bad mistake, one he was told not to make, and he did it anyway. Four cops died because of it.

      This country is still white enough to never forgive a man who let a black felon go on a murder rampage. Huckabee is finished.

    181. 181.

      KCinDC

      @Wile E. Quixote, look at the way conservative Protestant youth groups acted as free publicity agents for conservative (wacko) Catholic Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ”, even though they presumably think Gibson is going to hell, while he thinks the same about them.

      Look how people accepted Mormon Glenn Beck’s transformation into a televangelist.

      Look how Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and others were able to work with Sun Myung Moon, a cult leader who teaches that he himself is the Messiah, something far more offensive than anything a Mormon might say.

      I’m not so sure that if the Powers That Be decide Romney’s the one the Christianists won’t fall in line.

    182. 182.

      asiangrrlMN

      @gbear: I had to stop reading the thread just so I could say this, “Fuck. Tim. Pawlenty. with an eleven-billionty rusty pitchforks. Hard.”

      Now I shall re-commence reading this hilarious thread.

    183. 183.

      freelancer

      McArdle recently tut-tuted violent rhetoric on the web, especially the use of the phrase “curbstomp”.

      I’d like to see her react to this report of Rand Paul supporters literally curbstomping a member of Moveon.org (if it wasn’t staged. Don’t get me wrong, it’s probably real, but if Whale Wars isn’t above using stunts to play the victim, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the fringe left like Moveon is above something that stupid and craven.)

    184. 184.

      KG

      I saw the Matthews/Carter exchange and Carter actually blamed Anderson for his loss in 1980. Reagan won by 8 million votes, Anderson didn’t even get six, even assuming every one of Anderson’s voters would have gone to Carter (not likely), then he still would have lost by 2 million.

      As for the Bloomberg issue, as a political junkie, I find the idea interesting, but I just don’t see how it plays out with Bloomberg winning anywhere. I think he’d hurt Palin more than Obama, especially in swing states. In fact, checking the wikipedia, the polls done with three way races shows Obama winning.

      If it did actually manage to go to the House, then all hell breaks loose… cabinet positions and ambassadorships are going to become available for small state representatives. And where there are states with evenly divided representatives, we may not get to 26 states.

    185. 185.

      asiangrrlMN

      @Rich: Um. First of all, fucking Emmer has an actual chance of winning. The Dem/Indy split is how we got fucking Pawlenty for the past eight years. I would not put it past my fucking state to have enough disgruntled Dems (and I’ve talked to one who has several Dem friends stumping for Horner) vote for Horner (third party reliably gets eight to ten percent of the vote) to put Emmer over the top. And then, end of the world, and I don’t even have to worry about 2012.

    187. 187.

      morzer

      @KG:

      It depends on how those votes were distributed, not the total number. The Electoral College, you know.

    188. 188.

      asiangrrlMN

      @morzer: Oh my gawd. What a…GAH. As Favre was limping off the field, the announcer (can’t remember which) was going on and on about how it was too much to ask Favre to have one more heroic win. “He’s limping off the field.” Blah blah blah. MOTHERFUCKER threw 5 picks! Or was it six? Gaaaaaaaaaah!

    190. 190.

      morzer

      @asiangrrlMN:

      I rather suspect that his mother might be the only woman within a ten mile radius to escape Ol Man Dither’s sexual advances.

      That said, I don’t see how he can hope to finish out the season. This is starting to look like the changing of the guard with the big quarterbacks of recent years … Favre is clearly sliding fast, Brady doesn’t seem likely to post big numbers, Brees suddenly looks weak, and Manning hasn’t looked too glorious either.

      And of course, we lost Master JaMarcus so tragically before he could blossom….

    191. 191.

      morzer

      @freelancer:

      MoveOn has occasionally done some stupid things – but I don’t know of any evidence for them faking something like this.

      Do you?

    192. 192.

      John Bird

      I mean, what has MoveOn done that indicates they need to stage something like this to get attention? Every controversy surrounding that organization ever, in the history of the world, involves advertising contracts with big media.

      On the other hand, the MoveOn Devious Plot To Give A Fake Award To Rand Paul sounds exactly like them.

    193. 193.

      Calouste

      @Anne Laurie:

      Bloomberg was born in 1942. He will be 74 in 2016, 78 in 2020. The Republicans are tribal enough to vote for someone seriously past the retirement age, but I doubt that will be attreactive to third party voters.

    194. 194.

      asiangrrlMN

      @morzer: This is true. I wonder if he will ‘retire’ before he is forced to sit out a game? I mean, wouldn’t want that unbroken starting streak to get busted, now would we? “I know Cal Ripken Jr. started like a bajillion games in baseball, but to me, nothing is more impressive than Favre’s start streak because of the physicalness of the game.” One announcer actually said this one week. I almost killed my TV.

    195. 195.

      Xenos

      @John Bird:

      I say we call it being “in the O’Donnell business”.

      You should name that ‘The Producers’-esque campaign scam after the originaters, Pat and Bay Buchanan. They pocketed seven figures every time they ran.

    196. 196.

      xochi

      A centrist third party is a fundamentally losing idea, even by the low standards of other modern American third parties. Bloomberg doesn’t have a fraction of the charisma of a Ross Perot, and Obama has pretty much cornered the market on centrism. The idea that Bloomberg could be a spoiler is nuts. I could see Palin abandoning the Republicans and launching a third party before I could see this.

    200. 200.

      John Bird

      I am now imagining a water buffalo with Brett Favre’s head standing in the middle of a field near Hue in 1968. He is tapping his nose against a radio unit to sexually harass an AN in Morse code

    202. 202.

      Lysana

      @Joseph Nobles:

      President Pro Tem is in line before any cabinet member. Welcome to Vice President LaHood!

      Only if nominated. Y’all forget that a vacancy isn’t filled by a straight-line move-up. It’s not like a royal line of succession. The Speaker only gets to serve as President if both the President and VP are taken out at the same time. If the VP is out, the spot is filled by nomination, not immediate promotion. Gerald Ford was not Speaker when Spiro Agnew resigned.

    203. 203.

      Comrade Baron Elmo

      Palin won’t win the nomination because she won’t have put together a big enough stack of IOU’s in the Republican Party to get the support she’ll need from the party kingmakers. She’s much too much in the game for herself first and foremost, and keeps blowing off or pissing off too many candidates who need her help beyond a simple endorsement. Did you read about what a pain in the ass Palin was to the Chuck Grassley campaign? If you have serious Presidential aspirations, it’s pretty fucking stupid to annoy a powerful Iowan senator.

      Compare her to Nixon and Reagan, who paid their dues for years stumping for fellow Repubs. By 1968, so many GOPers owed Nixon big time that his nomination was all but a done deal – and that was only six years after being written off for good!

      Anyhow, I’m still betting Palin doesn’t run… she’s just running a huge cocktease on the GOP to reap truckloads of publicity and cash. Furthermore, I don’t think she has the nerve, anyhow – her bag-o-hammers stupidity will be so mercilessly exposed in the primary process that she’ll become a national laughingstock… and don’t think the prospect doesn’t scare her to death. Mama Grizzly rhetoric to the contrary, Palin is an utter coward who puts on a tough face for the easily duped. No way can she keep it up for the length of an entire Presidential campaign.

    204. 204.

      BC

      What bothers me most about the fantasy that Bloomberg would run on a 3rd party line is the complete lack of understanding by the punditocracy of how elections work. It isn’t like you just go to a state and say “I’m a 3rd party candidate and I want to be on the ballot for president in your state.” That’s not how it works. And it doesn’t work to go to the Federal Govt and say “Put me on the ballot in all 50 states” because that’s not a Federal Govt responsibility. If you want to run, you have to petition in all 50 states to have your name on the ballot. that’s a lot of work and why we don’t have a lot of parties in this country. So, when we hear of all the people circulating petitions to get Bloomberg on the ballot in all of the 50 states, then I’ll accept that he could be a viable candidate for president. Otherwise, it’s just a fantasy that the centrists in our punditocracy like to toy with.

    207. 207.

      TTT

      The idea that Mike Bloomberg would carry so much as one single solitary state is a gold-plated example of pundit imbecility. Like a fetish for Catcher In The Rye from that movie “Conspiracy Theory,” it is a preprogrammed subliminal tag that can be used by normal people to identify and silence dangerous freaks.

      Bloomberg is a decidedly nonmasculine Jewish 5-foot-tall billionaire New Yorker. He will never be President. He would never be taken seriously as a candidate for President. He would not even win New York State–most New Yorkers aren’t that fond of him as mayor and he came shockingly close to losing in his bid for a third term.

      His name only comes up in conversation because he is mayor of the town where the media lives.

    208. 208.

      Glen Tomkins

      One Master Ridiculous Election Theory to Rule Them All

      Astro-turfed corporate money allows tea-bagger dominated Rs to seize House this year. Tea-bagger House asserts power of the purse, hangs tough in game of budgetary chicken and prevails. Presidency becomes irrelevant, as corporate America reverts to the form of control of the govt they found so useful in the Gilded Era — rule through a bunch of highly replaceable stooges in the legislature, rather than some imperial President prone to delusions of competence and control.

      Good news: imperial presidency ends. Bad news: Congressional oligarchy replaces it.

    209. 209.

      Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan

      “First neither electorate simply hands over their votes, they expect the candidate to ask for the support, which means innumerable small events in every village in the state, can’t see Palin doing that. ”

      Only if each village ponies up $20K for the honor of hosting Palin.

    210. 210.

      Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan

      ” Presidency becomes irrelevant, as corporate America reverts to the form of control of the govt they found so useful in the Gilded Era—rule through a bunch of highly replaceable stooges in the legislature, rather than some imperial President prone to delusions of competence and control.”

      One thing we’ve learnt from the past twenty years is that the President has a fuck of a lot more freedom in foreign policy than domestic. FDR was able to do what he did because he had humongous Dem majorities in Congress: LBJ was able to get the Great Society because he’d been Senate Majority Leader and knew every little weakness of senior congressmen.

    211. 211.

      McWaffle

      I hope Favre’s done, that traitorous SOB. “One more heroic victory” my ass. It certainly wasn’t the end of the world here in Wisconsin.

    212. 212.

      kohler

      By 2012, The National Popular Vote bill could guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

      Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. Elections wouldn’t be about winning states. Every vote would be counted for and directly assist the candidate for whom it was cast. Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in a handful of swing states/

      The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes–that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

      Article II, section 1 of the Constitution, stipulates that in the event of no candidate getting at least 270 electoral college votes, the House of Representatives decides who will be president.
      With National Popular Vote this would never happen, because the compact always represents a bloc consisting of a majority of the electoral votes. Thus, an election for President would never be thrown into the House of Representatives (with each state casting one vote) and an election for Vice President would never be thrown into the Senate (with each Senator casting one vote).

      The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for president.

      In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). The recent Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University poll shows 72% support for direct nationwide election of the President. Support for a national popular vote is strong in virtually every state, partisan, and demographic group surveyed in recent polls in closely divided battleground states: Colorado– 68%, Iowa –75%, Michigan– 73%, Missouri– 70%, New Hampshire– 69%, Nevada– 72%, New Mexico– 76%, North Carolina– 74%, Ohio– 70%, Pennsylvania — 78%, Virginia — 74%, and Wisconsin — 71%; in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): Alaska — 70%, DC — 76%, Delaware –75%, Maine — 77%, Nebraska — 74%, New Hampshire –69%, Nevada — 72%, New Mexico — 76%, Rhode Island — 74%, and Vermont — 75%; in Southern and border states: Arkansas –80%, Kentucky — 80%, Mississippi –77%, Missouri — 70%, North Carolina — 74%, and Virginia — 74%; and in other states polled: California — 70%, Connecticut — 74% , Massachusetts — 73%, Minnesota — 75%, New York — 79%, Washington — 77%, and West Virginia- 81%.

      The National Popular Vote bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers, in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in Arkansas (6), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), The District of Columbia (3), Maine (4), Michigan (17), Nevada (5), New Mexico (5), New York (31), North Carolina (15), and Oregon (7), and both houses in California (55), Colorado (9), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), New Jersey (15), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), and Washington (11). The bill has been enacted by the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington. These seven states possess 76 electoral votes — 28% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.

      See http://www.NationalPopularVote.com

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