If we’re all going to have to put up with the Media Village courtiers’ touting Mitch Daniels as the serious GOP candidate for serious times, at least we’ve got Indiana-based blogger Doghouse Riley at Bats Left / Throws Right to keep us informed of the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit:
INTERESTING how this seems to be the week when Beltway insiders have decided to start the Republican Presidential campaign, with or without Republican Presidential candidates…
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The unwilling, indolent, but semi-dedicated Daniels watcher, for example, has been pummeled daily by the Dailies… you couldn’t swing a cat this week without hitting Mitch Daniels, unless you took care to swing it a minimum of five feet off the ground.
__
Marcus, who says she couldn’t imagine actually voting for Daniels, nevertheless thinks his Seriousness would make Obama a better candidate, thus raising the question of the last time she, or anyone else, was justified in believing Serious Issues actually enter into one of our Presidential campaigns, let alone make either candidate “better”. I’m going with Grant-Greeley.
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Despite all the grudging it requires, I respect the job Team Daniels has done to this point, considering the hand they have to work with. They shoehorned a malignant and diminutive wonk into Lamar Alexander’s Jes’ Folks campaign, and even found a plaid shirt that would fit him, with the result that, five years later, Rich Lowry would tell the world (ha ha! He told readers of National Review! Exaggeration for comic effect) what an authentic consumer of fried pork and pig feed Daniels was, even though no one with passing familiarity of the genre could possibly believe it. Following his proposal, ten minutes after his first inauguration, to raise income taxes on the top earners in Indiana in order to pay to reduce the “deficit” and burnish his combover, Team Daniels saw to it the man never spoke extemporaneously in public again. After a couple months of watching him lunge across tables or run down city streets to grasp the kneecaps of hecklers, they saw to it no one with anything over a 12 handicap would ever get within a hundred yards of him again, save Fairgoers and photo-op truck-stop waitresses, widely spaced. Their man somehow went from Bush popularity ratings in 2007 to a landslide victory only partly explained by his opponent’s non-existence and his own enormous war chest. The Post marriage article has Daniels’ opponents running from his “intellectual heft”; this for a man whose five favorite books are Atlas Shrugged…
Go over, enjoy the man’s oeuvre, and let’s hope we don’t break Blogger again.
Just Some Fuckhead
If I derail this thread, will you ban me, AL?
Ghanima Atreides
@Just Some Fuckhead: has AL ever banned anyone?
Mitch Daniels dances a leprechaun jig for Obama.
fhtagn
You know, Mitch Daniels does bear an odd resemblance to Gollum. I think it’s the exiguous stature, the skinny limbs, the grey skin, the pale, glowing eyes, and the comb-over, but I could be wrong.
Villago Delenda Est
@fhtagn:
I was thinking more along the lines of Clint Howard’s turn on the original Star Trek, as Balok, commander of the Fesarius.
But Gollum seems to work as well.
Yutsano
I suppose the fluffing shall now commence in earnest. I’ll get out the paper towels.
Ghanima Atreides
@Yutsano: I suppose the
fluffingfapping shall now commence in earnest.fixt
jrg
I hope there won’t be another holocaust, but that won’t bring Anne Frank back, will it?
AT
Being a serious candidate option when the competition is Bachman, Palin and co., is like saying you’re the smart one at the school for the mentally disadvantaged because you can write something resembling your name in fingerpainting class.
mr. whipple
I think this would be as good a time as any to say fuck the Heat.
fhtagn
Speaking of very serious people, Christmas has apparently come early twice already this year:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/05/gop-looks-to-shock-failing-medicare-plan-back-to-life-with-new-message.php?ref=fpa
JCT
Wow, does this whole Mitch Daniels as the “savior” thing smell like Dubya all over again or what?
Jim, Once
Really, really like that blog. Thanks, Anne Laurie. Best comment ever:
Kobie
@mr. whipple: I concur. They got destroyed.
fhtagn
@JCT:
Smells like the Villagers putting lipstick on a dead pig to me.
Mike in NC
I’m feeling me some diminutive starbursts, but it could also be the vodka kicking in.
Yutsano
@Mike in NC:
I saw what you did there.
fhtagn
@Mike in NC:
But do you feel a tiny thrill going up your leg?
TenguPhule
Its not even open season yet and I want the elections to go away already.
fhtagn
@TenguPhule:
Take five valium, wait 18 months and call me in the morning.
Kobie
The special election in NY-26 is in two days. I cannot WAIT for it to be over. I’m sick of the commercials.
Funny thing is, the Democrat’s not running many. She’s just letting the the wackadoodle and the slightly less wackadoodle Republican take potshots at each other.
And for the record, Jane Corwin (the Republican in that race) looks damn good for 46 years old.
Luthe
@AT: Where would you like your Internet delivered?
Spaghetti Lee
I managed to convince my fairly-conservative-but-still-cares-about-facts-and-stuff uncle today that Paul Ryan was full of shit, or at least that he’s not some sort of genius. Every little bit helps, I suppose.
Suffern ACE
One learns quite a bit reading Doghouse Riley. He’s very good at refreshing my memory on things that I should remember, but have slipped out of my head due to the mindless drivel I’ve put in it. The young’uns too would do well for themselves to go over to his house every once in awhile to sit and listen in.
Suffern ACE
@Spaghetti Lee: Would you come over and talk to my partner? He asked me this weekend if I was happy about Paul Ryan because he’s from my home state. Seems like he’s been reading Brooks behind my back and somehow was under the impression that Ryan was smart and one of the good ones.
Ash Can
@fhtagn: So lemme get this straight — Ryan’s bushel-of-manure budget bombs, so he’s…doubling down and reiterating it?
That boy’s elevator doesn’t quite make it to the top floor, does it?
That would be Mitch Daniels pissing on it.
fhtagn
@Suffern ACE:
Have you asked him about the unemployment rate assumed by the Ryan plan? Also, about how it increases the deficit while butchering the safety net? I am no expert, but that really doesn’t sound smart or good to me.
Mark S.
@fhtagn:
I’ve learned from Beltway Villagers that proposing unpopular things for the bottom 99% is both serious and courageous.
In other news, Newt managed two racist dog whistles in one speech on Friday. It’s really hard to believe these guys only get 6% of the African-American vote.
Mark B
Mitch has also had an … interesting … personal life. His wife left him for another man, and he raised the kids as a single father for a few years. I guess the grass wasn’t greener and she eventually came back and remarried him. Although I don’t think it’s a disqualification, it’s certainly odd.
fhtagn
@Ash Can:
I have trouble believing it myself, but yes, Paul Ryan is now playing chicken with reality, and making Newt Gingrich look like a responsible adult in comparison. What’s more, to put the crap cherry on the rabid right’s self-serve shit sundae, the GOP voted for the Ryan weapon of self-destruction en masse.
Martin
@Mark S.:
Clearly it’s because the 37.5M African Americans that vote Democratic are the real racists.
Ash Can
@Mark B: Doug J covered this topic earlier today, as neither here nor there in and of itself, but imagine the paroxysms of the pundits if he were a Dem candidate.
fhtagn
@Martin:
Indeed. Real, enlightened black people wouldn’t have voted for Civil Rights in 1964 either. They would have respected property rights, yes sir!
Martin
@fhtagn: Yeah, it’s really something to behold, isn’t it?
fhtagn
@Martin:
I sometimes wonder whether this is all some utterly bizarre dream, and I ought not to eat cheese late at night. And yet, why would I have a dream that’s lasted roughly 30 years at this point, and with such consistently strange plots and deranged characters?
suzanne
@Ash Can:
DAMNIT YOU BEAT ME.
I love this blog.
mr. whipple
@fhtagn:
I can’t freaking believe it. By all means, double down on medicare vouchers, you silly little goopers!
suzanne
O/T, but I haz a funny.
My daughter had the neighbor girls over today. The oldest one is SO damn annoying, oh my Lord. My husband, who is a SLP in an elementary school and has the patience of a saint, cannot stand this kid. Anyway, she was playing with the baby… who promptly vomited all over her.
LMAO.
Sometimes karma works out.
Suffern ACE
@mr. whipple: They should vote for ryan’s plan at least once a week, lest anyone one the fence forget that eliminating medicare is the republican position.
mr. whipple
@Suffern ACE:
Yup. What a gift!
fhtagn
@suzanne:
Double that child’s chocolate ration, stat. Gotta keep the guns loaded, so to speak.
fhtagn
@mr. whipple:
Could it be that the crazies have finally just gone over the edge into believing that everyone else shares their reality? I can’t help wondering whether this is the fruit of too many years of “winning the post-lunch news cycle”.
SBJules
I would think that no women would vote for him. At least those paying attention.
Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus)
@fhtagn:
They’ve been hit by the ‘believing their own hype’ bat a lot lately, but this… I mean, it’s not just that he’s trying to pass it again. He’s trying to SELL it to the PUBLIC. He’s actively drawing attention to the dumbest thing the GOP has ever done, the only thing they could do that would alienate their own base.
mr. whipple
@fhtagn:
I don’t know what it is, but the Dems better bring the big hammer this week.
fhtagn
@Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus):
And he’s doing it just after Obama destroyed the birthers and celebrated by sending OBL to sleep with the fishes. This feels suspiciously like a major win.
Martin
@Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus): He’s a Randroid. It’s religious. You wouldn’t expect Christians to give up Jesus without a hell of a fight either.
Martin
@fhtagn: They’re desperate. The only thing Obama can really be attacked on from the right is jobs, and what’s the GOP jobs plan? Tax cuts. And they can’t play that and the deficit at the same time. They got nothin’.
fhtagn
@Martin:
In wingnut alchemy-economics, tax cuts for the rich reduce the deficit and create jobs. You also get an endless night with Angelina Jolie and a front seat as the righteous ascend to heaven in a ball of fire sponsored by Goldman-Sachs and Walmart.
bago
@Martin: Actually, I would expect Christians to turn the other cheek.
bryanD
@Martin: “The only thing Obama can really be attacked on from the right is jobs”…???
Don’t underestimate the spring-loaded opposition to the health insurance industry welfare plan that Obama got passed into law under the guise of some kind of “health care” solution. That bitch is a mutt. Virginia and Pennsylvania are out the window. If the economy is still in the tank (it will be), Ohio and Michigan are gone.
So, while Daniels ain’t my cup of tea, he can beat Obama by several points, I’d say. It’s simply in the math. Plus there is no Chimp to make Obama look good in contrast to this time. Black president: done that. Making him a one-termer can be seen as Progressive and Objective at the same time.
Ash Can
Izzat you, Karl?
Yutsano
@bryanD:
They trumped their own card by promptly turning around and voting to end Medicare. In other words, they alienated a fair portion of the demographic who opposed the ACA.
Cite?
The economy, despite itself, is slowly improving. And Reagan was re-elected in a landslide with employment numbers higher than they are now. You’re also forgetting the Kasich/Sanders effect. The GOP has alienated a shit ton of folks in these states with overreach.
Daniels will be lucky to make it out of the primaries. He’s not catching fire with the base at all. Plus his name recognition outside of Indiana is almost nil.
Making shit up is not debating. But it is an interesting word salad here.
@bryanD: Okay now I know you’re not serious. Go away. Birferism is dead and buried.
bryanD
@fhtagn: “And he’s doing it just after Obama destroyed the birthers and celebrated by sending OBL to sleep with the fishes.”
Anomalies persist due to Team Obama not getting its damn story straight:
“Fukino said, she wanted to inspect the files — and did so, taking with her the state official in charge of vital records. She found the original birth record, properly numbered, half typed and half handwritten, and signed by the doctor who delivered Obama, located in the files. She then put out a public statement asserting to the document’s validity.”
HALF TYPED AND HALF HANDWRITTEN??????????1??
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42519951/ns/politics-more_politics/t/ex-hawaii-official-denounces-ludicrous-birther-claims/
Tyro
… you couldn’t swing a cat this week without hitting Mitch Daniels, unless you took care to swing it a minimum of five feet off the ground.
That is mean-spirited, unfair, and inappropriate.
And also very funny.
Ash Can
@bryanD:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Ash Can
@Yutsano: Looks to me like Brick Oven Bill is back with a new handle.
fhtagn
@bryanD:
So I fucked up with the time machine. But I will tell you this – it was Comrade Smartypants Stalin and Comrade Smug Bastard Mao who insisted on using the ball-point pen.
Happy now?
Yutsano
@Ash Can: I don’t think so. Not enough Pythagorean theorem or the Seven Liberal Arts. Then again BoB has false flagged on us before. Hmm…this may require more analysis.
bryanD
Ooowee. This Ash Can person is re-pissing his territory madly because of me, NotBrickOvenBill???
Office workers are funny!
Villago Delenda Est
@fhtagn:
It was the doctor who delivered the mussulman in a barroom in Mombassa on August 4, 1961, setting the stage for the Mau Mau conquest of America in 2009.
Bill Murray
@Yutsano:
The unemployment rate when Reagan was re-elected was 7.2% (http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/UNRATE.txt), further the current number needs about 1.4% to be added to it to be comparable to the early 1980s (http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/ur-2009-03.pdf). Thus, the current rate is larger than the same time in Reagan’s presidency (10.2%).
If the same trend as for Reagan holds (a big if, as there is a fair chance that the huge reductions in state budgets that are now occurring will prevent this), Obama will be unbeatable.
Luthe
@mr. whipple:
Sounds like it’s time to bring back NANCY SMASH!
@bryanD: How much did Sarah Palin charge for those lessons in word salad making?
Linda
A tipoff as to what politicians beltway commentators have a crush on: they are always portrayed as somehow reluctant warriors, Very Serious, even when they are in heat for votes. Daniels is a good case in point: he was portrayed as “reluctant” by Politico, even though he just threw the women of Indiana under a bus to suck up to the Tea Party overlords of the Republican Party. How reluctant is that?
Also, media darlings can get respect from the media even when their own constituents chase them out of townhalls (like Paul Ryan). Of course, Ryan wasn’t throwing media types under a bus, just old people.
Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus)
@bryanD:
Do go read Ezra. Said ‘health insurance company welfare’ is in fact packed full of price controls, some of them very sophisticated and powerful. Oh, and many of them put insurance companies in the vice, hard. Since ‘controlling skyrocketing health care costs’ and ‘ensuring universal health care’ were the two most important things, it’s a pretty great law.
T.
You couldn’t swing a cat this week without hitting Mitch Daniels, unless you took care to swing it a minimum of five feet off the ground.
Oh, I get it, He’s short. Too funny. FWIW, You’d not have hit James Madison, either. The F—–g loser. You’re right to dismiss him for being short; you’re not a bigot. Not at all.
David
Short jokes seem to be the only acceptable gender/religion/appearance/etc. jokes on liberal websites. Not sure why. By my count, Doghouse Riley had at least 3 in the excerpt above. Seems like a dick; doubt I’ll be visiting his website.
grandpajohn
@fhtagn:
And I read somewhere that Rahm is being sworn is as Mayor today, talk about timing?
nanute
The dog is on a roll. Today is Mitten’s turn: http://doghouseriley.blogspot.com/2011/05/way-things-arent.html
Catsy
@bryanD:
I demand authoritative proof that BryanD is not a simple script making calls to an API for http://pa.lindro.me/.