I know I give fellow academics a lot of shit for being politically naive, but the mathematicians I talked to in London last June were all saying exactly what Brad DeLong and Krugman are saying now (via), that Cameron is fucked and that Clegg has probably permanently completely destroyed the Lib Dems (whom most of them voted for).
Note that Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats in Britain could end this farce tomorrow, and give their country a chance. It would be the end of Nick Clegg’s political career, of course–but his career is over already. It may be the end of the Liberal Democrats–but they have a much better chance if they admit they made a big mistake in selling their soul to the Conservatives for a mess of pottage than if they try to brazen it out and support the current government.
It is long past time for the Liberal Democrats in Britain to go into opposition: for them to cross the aisle and declare that they have no confidence in the Cameron-Osborne government. The longer they delay, the worse for Britain.
It’s been so long now, but it seems now it was only yesterday that Sully and Bobo were celebrating all those tough bi-partisan spending cuts that Cameron and Clegg did.
This is why I don’t feel at all guilty rooting for Cain or Gingrich. Romney, and maybe even Huntsman, are just as dangerous. The serious people are the ones who may destroy us in the end.
arguingwithsignposts
I’m sure there’s a think tank gig for him somewhere.
Napoleon
Logic tells you that the Lib-Dems win few or no seats in any future election. They just have to be toast, but I have not seen any polling from over there. Has anyone seen any?
Bullsmith
I followed a link to LibDem sight and their own spin was unbelievably atrocious. “If things had looked like they were going to get better then we would’ve pursued tax cuts for the poor while the Cons would’ve pursued their target of cutting the inheritance tax.” Mumble mumble austerity forever mumble mumble.
The poor don’t pay very much tax. Inherited wealth, on the other hand, can be quite considerable. And of course, everyone knows the Lib Dems voters were all about tax cuts. On the plus side, Clegg’s bunch are providing a very good way for non-Brits to fully appreciate the meaning of the word “Wankers”.
The Ithacan
The UK Clown Coalition is clearing the decks for a return of a non-Blairified Labor.
Can’t happen soon enough.
BGinCHI
The reason they aren’t crowing about The British Miracle is because there isn’t one. They have pursued exactly the contractionary, supply-side policies that Delong and Kthug were warning about. And it is getting them nowhere except maybe feeling good about tightening belts.
This ideological stranglehold, in which people who know fuck all about economics are put in charge of economies, has got to end.
I think we are living in the Bad Old Days.
Comrade Mary
No “maybe” about Huntsman, Doug. remember, he’s 100% on board with Paul Ryan’s plan.
rikyrah
good…they should lose their political power for going along with that nonsense.
bin Lurkin'
@BGinCHI:
Oh no, these are the good times, the 1% is nowhere near done fucking us yet, we still have curtain rods and sparrows to put on them.
Bullsmith
@bin Lurkin’:
Those sparrows are also edible. What are we complaining about?
MikeJ
@Napoleon: Libdems poll at about 9% now. Pre ConDem, they were 17-20.
Anoniminous
@Napoleon:
UK Polling Report, the go-to place.
At this time they are projecting a 34 Labour majority with a 42% share of the vote versus ~32% share in the last election.
MTiffany
I’m not so sure about Huntsman’s inclusion with Romney — if Huntsman’s the one that explicitly rejects young earth creationism and other bibliolatrous woo, that is.
Oh wait, Huntsman thinks Paul Ryan’s plan isn’t bullshit.
Okay, you got that right. Huntsman is just as dangerous. Apparently his appreciation of science doesn’t extend to math and economics.
Anoniminous
@Bullsmith:
As is the curtains. High fiber diet is good for you.
Omnes Omnibus
I’m so old that I remember when the Social Democrats were going to be the savio[u]r of Britain.
MikeJ
@Anoniminous: To be fair, that 32% share never reflected 32% support from the population.
Bullsmith
@Anoniminous:
Meat and vegetables. Balanced and nutritious.
Schlemizel
I have been hearing that some conservatives are starting to believe Huntsman is one of them – D’ah! That would be the worst possible thing. They need someone as ignorant of reality as they are but has not shown them self to be completely wacko. Pasta help this country if the fall upon him as their not-Romney.
PeakVT
Why does anyone think Clegg would bring down the government. If he did, he would be out of a job, and a lot of LibDems would lose their seats. The LibDems are going to stick it out to the bitter end in hopes that the electorate will forgive them when the next required election comes around.
Loneoak
I’m having hard time deciding which is more hilarious news from the gooper headlines today: Cain wants to continue contributing his ‘foreign policy ideas’ or Newt accepting the invitation to the Apprentice death match debate.
Napoleon
Mike @10
Since they are first past post like the US and not proportional if they draw 9% in an election is there any seat they can win?
Anoniminous @11
Wow, the text of that piece makes it sound like the failure of the ConLibs has not exactly sent everyone running into the arms of Labor. There is a lot there that is negative for Labor.
Davis X. Machina
@PeakVT: All seven of them. My UK friend says that if there were an election tomorrow, they’d be under 10 seats. The Other SNP (Somerset Nationalist Party.)
J. Michael Neal
@MTiffany: Huntsman is not nearly as dangerous as Romney, for three reasons:
1) While he supports Ryan’s plan, his approach to foreign policy leaves me a hell of a lot less scared that he’d blow up the world as president;
2) While his economic policies would be bad, I have at least *some* confidence that he’d allow empirical results to affect his further actions, whereas I have no confidence at all that Romney would do so;
3) Perhaps most importantly, a Republican Party in which Huntsman could conceivably win the nomination is one that would have redeveloped some desire to actually govern rather than just lay waste to everything.
I disagree with Huntsman about far too much to ever actually vote for him, but mere sanity is enough to put him far above any of the other clowns.
William Hurley
The tragic part, in the Greek sense, is that American “Exceptionalists” inhabiting the Village, our political parties and the White House insist that by virtue of our “exceptional” nature we are not and cannot be like “them”.
Of course, home-owners who’ve been on the “receding tide” end of the destruction of ~$14 trillion in housing-based wealth will disagree with these exceptionalists, introducing them – via the ballot box – to the difficulties of changing careers at this point in our nation’s history.
At least Barry can fall back on his JD, giving rise to the prospects of a new Chicago-based law firm setting up shop in 2013. The name of he firm might be “Obama & Obama, LLP”.
Ruckus
@J. Michael Neal:
I think you are being far too kind. We elect a president, we get a lot of people they hire that we most probably do not want anywhere near power.
In this group of sociopathic morons he may be the cream, it’s still a very sour pail.
Corey
Flame away, but I’d vote for Huntsman (although I doubt I’ll ever get the opportunity). Seems exactly like Obama, except his policies will be described as Burkean and restrained, not like the Kenyan’s anti-colonial redistribution schemes.
It’s not good that the Brooks set and the totebaggers rule our world, but given that they do, might as well have a president they can talk this nonsense about and support.
Yutsano
@William Hurley:
You really need to stop leaving tells ratfucker.
Mike in NC
Because austerity only applies to the unwashed masses.
arguingwithsignposts
@Yutsano: word. i thought the same.@Corey:
Yes, exactly like Obama.
J. Michael Neal
@Ruckus: I believe that I said I’d never vote for him. However, I think that you VASTLY underestimate the difference between being wrong and being out of touch with reality. In fact, it’s precisely the difference in who Huntsman would nominate for a lot of executive branch positions that would make up a large part of that difference.
PeakVT
@Yutsano: Heh. I pied the twit for that very phrase.
BGinCHI
@Corey: Who could flame you ya big genius.
Corey
@arguingwithsignposts: Judging by what he’s said publicly, it seems clear that Huntsman would, under cover of his “Burkean” credentials, engage in a program of Keynesian stimulus (although with maybe more tax cuts than we’d like, but Obama has done the same). His tax reform proposal is pretty much classic moderate Democrat, you could imagine Obama doing the same thing and talking about it the same way.
The difference is, we’d actually get the things that President Huntsman would ask for, because the totebaggers and the moderate Dems would be in line, and the GOP is too authoritarian to reliably vote against a president of its own party.
BGinCHI
@Corey: Come on Doug, you aren’t even trying now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yutsano: I’ll cop to a perverse fascination with that pompous, overwrought typing style. Especially since it’s clear someone put so much effort into it, and is quite pleased with it.
Anoniminous
@MikeJ:
Indeed.
As I recall, the last minute polling suggested Labour would have been the largest party in Parliament if they hadn’t run Brown at the top of the ticket and the Brits would have a Lab/Lib coalition running the place.
Chuck Butcher
While Pres Obama is vastly preferable to the GOPer parade, I’m pretty damn unsure how we get from Obama to real actual reform of the economic system; even in some distant future.
People just will not vote in Primaries and those that do get to hear about how “centrists” are the winning candidates from the MSM and the centrist fluffers found even here.
schrodinger's cat
Why has everybody forgotten the lessons of the Great Depression? Keynes was British, for god’s sake. Of course Sully still defending the deficit slashing policies, even when they did not work. Why? Because that was the right thing to do and now VSPs want Obama to go with Bowles-Simpson.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: I thought Social Democrats are German.
Anoniminous
@Napoleon:
Labour was wiped-out in the last Scottish election and all of the Labour activists I talk with are livid Milliband is hanging around, letting the Con/Libs self-destruct, rather than dumping Third-Way Blairism and getting people to vote for Labour rather than against the Tories or Lib/Dems.
I grant bias since most of “my peeps” are Lefties.
burnspbesq
@DougJ:
I’m at a loss to understand why anyone would think a Gordon Brown-led Labor/LibDem coalition would have pursued policies materially different than the policies actually pursued by the current coalition.
Gordon Brown is not, and never was, Michael Foot or Tony Benn. Old Labor was a rotting corpse while Thatcher was still PM. Tony Blair just tossed the last shovelful of earth on the coffin.
burnspbesq
@Anoniminous:
Rather pointless to speculate, since that’s a counter-factual that could never have occurred.
superdestroyer
The government in the UK spends consumes about 50% of GDP and taxes at 40% of the GDP. Does anyone really believe that a party that raised taxes by 25% would be doing any better than a party that is trying to cut spending by 20%?
What would the state of the UK economy be if they paid 50% in taxes?
burnspbesq
@Anoniminous:
Then why don’t they just dump him at the next annual convention? Could it be that they don’t have a viable alternative?
Anoniminous
@schrodinger’s cat:
Social Democracy is a Left Wing political movement with political parties in Germany and the Nordic countries. Elsewhere, e.g., Spain, they tend to use the S-Word without qualifying adjectives or nouns.
Most Social Democrat parties have become a vaguely Left-of-Center supporters of the status quo.
Murc
I’ve been back-and-forthing over this with other people in various places all day, and I’ll say here what I’ve said elsewhere:
It only makes sense for the Liberal Democrats in general and Clegg in particular to get the hell out if you assume that they’re motivated by concern for their country as opposed to political survival. From the latter standpoint the last thing they want to do is leave. Out of power they can get absolutely murdered for at least another generation, if not for all time. In power, even if only as an enabling barnacle on the sinking Tory ship, they have at least a little bit of hope.
Clegg is going to ride this right into 2015. He’d be dumb not to, from the perspective of wanting to end his career as ‘Lord Clegg’ as opposed to ‘that guy who couldn’t even hold his own seat.’
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: In the early 80s, a group of people split off from Labour and formed the Social Democrats. They felt that Labour was going too far left under Michael Foot,et al., so they formed a center left party. Quite a few very bright lights from the Labour Party went over. In the late 80s, they formed and alliance with the the Liberals that eventually led to the formation of the Lib-Dems. When I was going to school in London in ’84, the Social Dems were quite popular among center-left types.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: Wiki.
Litlebritdifrnt
@burnspbesq:
My mother is oft to say that Tony Blair was the best conservative prime minister that we ever had.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: and @Anoniminous:
Thanks! I did not know that.
ETA: You went to school in London, where may I ask if you don’t mind? I has a curious.
Davis X. Machina
@superdestroyer:
Similar to every other country in Western Europe? Where that’s more or less the norm?
Anoniminous
@burnspbesq:
I don’t know how much you know about how European parties are run, so forgive me if you already know this:
Labour has a strong Top/Down organization, centralized in London, run by and for “Chaps Like Us.” Local candidates are awarded the nomination by the Center, sometimes the local organization has some input but most of the time not. The people nominated have spent time at the Center acquiring the network of support by showing “I’m a Chap, like you.” [Note, even women candidates are “Chaps.”] The way to advance and be awarded a nomination is to sit down, shut up, do what you’re told, and kiss ass.
The Party Conference is a way for the Center to grab some headlines and TV time for the Leadership and tell party members and the media the message(s) the Center wants spread during the coming year. All political maneuvering happens before the Conference or behind the stage at the Conference.
From what I’m hearing, and I really don’t hear all that much, local activists and organizations of the Welsh Labour Party are seething and there MAY be a revolt at an upcoming Welsh Conference. [Stay tuned] I’m not hearing jack from the Scottish Labour Party, all I know is their Up & Comers were fairly well wiped-out in the last Scottish parliamentary election with the Oldest of Old Guard more-or-less surviving so I’m not expecting much to happen there. English Labour is run by the Center, I doubt they will revolt against themselves. :-)
schrodinger's cat
@Litlebritdifrnt: Kinda like Clinton?
MikeJ
@superdestroyer:
Why don’t you google that?
What do you think the UK GDP is?
What do you think UK government spending is?
People who actually know the answers to these two questions know that the actual percentage is much, much, much closer to 30% than 50. Before the banks drove the economy into the ditch the percentage was closer to 25. Austerity has made the gdp worse and so drove up the percentage.
Since you’re a lying scumbag why should we listen to anything you have to say? Oh right, we have pie filters. We don’t need to.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: My undergrad has maintained a satellite campus in London since the early 70s. They have a building where the students live and go to class. At the time I was there, it was in Bayswater about a block from Hyde Park; it is now in South Kensington. Each year a couple of professors from the main campus go over, and the rest are generally faculty from British universities.
Sly
@superdestroyer:
Those numbers are meaningless unless you account for changes in GDP since the recession began. If government spending does not fall faster than GDP, then government spending as a percent of GDP goes up.
This is the reason why asshole wingnuts claim that “OBAMA IS SPENDING ALL OUR MONIES” when he isn’t. U.S. GDP has fallen. Spending by the U.S. government has remained stagnant, or has fallen but not as far as the drop in GDP. Thus, to people who don’t understand economic statistics and who are regularly duped by low-brow bourgeois lackeys like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, U.S. Government spending as a percent of GDP appears to have gone up. But its a meaningless measurement because fluctuations in GDP aren’t accounted for.
Bruce S
“it seems now it was only yesterday that Sully and Bobo were celebrating all those tough bi-partisan spending cuts that Cameron and Clegg did”
If our political spectrum and resultant discourse were more rational, Bobo and Sully would both be columnists for NewsMax rather than embraced by liberals for occasional signs of blood flowing to their cerebral cortex.
Southern Beale
Please tell me something else interesting is happening besides Herman Cain dropping out of the race ….
Omnes Omnibus
@Southern Beale: The Wisconsin-MSU game will be starting soon.
Bill Arnold
@MikeJ:
Not speaking for superdestroyer, who is bending the rhetoric to a deceitful level, but the the Guardian indicates that the percentage is about 45 percent (2011). I’m not sure what is being counted as public spending here. (Nearly all health care is counted.)
eemom
@burnspbesq:
That’s different FROM. You’re welcome. : )
ETA: Knowing nothing about British politics OR the MU-whoever game, I hereby appoint myself Ombudswoman of this thread.
Litlebritdifrnt
@schrodinger’s cat:
Pretty much.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Ombudswoman or grammar scold?
NR
There’s really no difference between the Lib Dems in Britain supporting Conservative austerity policies, and the Democrats in America supporting Republican austerity policies. And yet people here bash the Lib Dems and praise the Democrats. Makes no sense.
Villago Delenda Est
@Southern Beale:
The game to determine which team will not cause your eyes to bleed when you watch the Rose Bowl.
ice weasel
Re: Huntsman comments in this thread.
Forgive if this sounds partisan, it’s not. Forgive me if this sounds like a plea to ideology, it’s not.
But seriously, if you can stand in front of other humans and proudly describe yourself as a republican, that alone should preclude from holding any elected or appointed office. Haven’t we had enough of this foolishness yet? At what point do we just say, “OK, enough, it’s clear that your party is just too craven/whackaloon to do anything but harm”?
Just asking.
superdestroyer
@MikeJ:
The GDP of the United Kingdom was $2.7 trillion US Dollars in 2007. http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:GBR&dl=en&hl=en&q=gdp+of+united+kingdom
The UK budget in 2007 was 587 billion pounds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_Kingdom_budget
The exchange rate in 2007 was 0.58 pounds to the dollar. That makes the UK budget about $1.2 trillion or 42% not counting local taxes.
In 2011, the UK has a projected GDP of $2.3 trillion but has government expenditures of 700 billion pounds (1.15 trillion US). In reality, the UK government is consuming a higher percentage of GDP than it did in 2007.
Omnes Omnibus
@ice weasel:
In my view, the early 1980s.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
if you must know, I prefer St. Eemom, Righteous Defender of the English Language.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: So we’ll go with grammar scold then. Glad that’s settled.
J. Michael Neal
@Sly:
Hey, now. *I’m* a bourgeois lackey and I deeply resent being lumped together with those two reactionary authoritarians.
J. Michael Neal
@Southern Beale: If you get Fox College Sports, the Gopher/North Dakota game just started.
Omnes Omnibus
@J. Michael Neal: But are you a low-brow bourgeois lackey?
Davis X. Machina
@NR: Because ‘the Democrats’ are already a coalition, sharing only a name, one can perfectly consistently praise the Democrats for opposing and blast the Democrats, for supporting, Republican austerity policies.
AA+ Bonds
Huntsman may have better beliefs about empiricism but his ‘reasoning’ concludes that we should Deregulate Everything, so if you have nice things to say about Huntsman you are basically David Brooks
Not to mention that his plan for deficits is so similar to Paul Ryan’s plan that, well, John Huntsman’s plan for deficit reduction is actually literally Paul Ryan’s plan for deficit reduction.
A Huntsman “Austerity Presidency” would cripple us for decades. You can’t very well rake Clegg & Cameron over the coals and then say “maybe” about Huntsman, who wants to repeat their mistakes.
AA+ Bonds
@Corey:
Republican Congress + President Huntsman = slash spending, kill jobs, soak the poor, give to the rich, deregulate Wall Street, deregulate pollution, deregulate everything.
Huntsman would not be an exception out of the goodness of his heart. There’s no way he COULD be. He’d lose his caucus. Expect any Republican President’s agenda to be set by John Boehner. A Huntsman presidency would be “moderate” like George W. Bush’s.
By the mechanics of American politics alone, John Huntsman is a terrible idea for America.
AA+ Bonds
Please for the love of God,
DO NOT get Stockholm syndrome so bad that you think the absolute lunacy of a Herman Cain means John Huntsman’s some sort of sane choice during high unemployment.
Huntsman is still an austerity nut.
Huntsman is still arrayed against the vast majority of economists concerning what the government should do during high unemployment.
A Republican presidency will not result in anything but decline and collapse of the American way of life.
DougJ
@burnspbesq:
I haven’t thought this enough to say for sure…but I think I agree with you here.
AA+ Bonds
I mean if you think a Huntsman presidency would be “okay” then you might as well sign up for the David Brooks 1% doo dah band whatever the fuck they’re calling that, because you’re endorsing a notably MORE conservative version of that bullshit
Omnes Omnibus
@AA+ Bonds: No one here (except Corey who might be a bad troll by DougJ) is talking about voting for Huntsman. Noting that he is not a bugfuck crazy as the rest of the GOP does not equal supporting the man’s candidacy.
jl
Huntsman could be very bad news as president. Does he really believe the Ryan plan nonsense, or is he just using it to get his nose in the GOP crazy hate tent? Who knows? Too dangerous to find out.
Huntsman has been rising in the polls (Edit, for NH primary), all the way to fourth, at 11 percent, right behind Ron Paul.
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/11/29/huntsmentum-rasmussen-now-has-huntsman-in-double-digits-in-new-hampshire/
One electable GOP candidate is too many, two is downright dangerous.
Yes, I have commented relatively nice comments about Huntsman, but would never vote for him, and I would work just as hard to defeat Huntsman as I would any of the others if they ran against Obama.
Is it unfair that Huntsman may be a good man, a nice man, he had sincerely well intentioned plans, maaaan, but he needs to be crushed politically if he ever gets a chance to run for president, or any other national office?
Well, life is unfair, and there are plenty of opportunities for him elsewhere.
AA+ Bonds
For instance, expect to see a big push to kick gays and lesbians out of the military if Huntsman is elected
AA+ Bonds
@Omnes Omnibus:
The point I’m making is that you need to slag on Huntsman in the same breath you slag on Cain or Gingrich or Romney, you can’t do this mealy-mouthed “oh he’s a good one relatively speaking” deal because on the off chance he gets the Veep nod, your words will come back to fuckin haunt you
Trust me, they’ll come back to haunt you anyway when he’s a talking head on MSNBC explaining why we don’t need, like, “rules” to stop global warming
jl
But the reactionary in crowd says that Cain support goes to lump (Edit no, BLOB)fish x obese mole rat Gingrich.
Edit: you will see in a few moments.
It is a brave Newt moment in our political history.
Savor the moment, you kids, it is a rare generation that is allowed to bask in the glory of a hyperborean world historical figure like Newt.
AA+ Bonds
On the Brits: I honestly feel that for all the moaning we do about the two-party system, it’s the British that are hung out to dry by their parties more often than not compared to us.
As burnspbesq pointed out above, Labour voters basically don’t have a Labour Party to vote for anymore – and given the brightening outlook for Labour’s numbers in the near future, this has to be doubly frustrating.
Me, I’m curious how the Trots will do.
somethingblue
The whole Huntsman discussion seems kind of academic. If even politically tuned-in people don’t know how to spell your three-letter first name, you’re never going to be President.
Omnes Omnibus
@AA+ Bonds: No, you seem to be lecturing us about how a Huntsman presidency would be horrible as though we are not aware of this fact. Also, you won’t find a lot of praise for Huntsman from me. You won’t find a lot of praise for any Republican from me.
Robert Waldmann
Odd that you claim to be surprised that academics agree with DeLong and Krugman who are … academics. Also foreigners.
I’t sure Brad is right, but, then again, I am a non UK academic too.
jl
blobfish
http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%3Fei%3DUTF-8%26p%3Dblobfish&w=160&h=105&imgurl=www.bing.com%2Fimages%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dblobfish%23focal%3D7b8f7efc7da02484a331f723d8080bd0%26furl%3Dhttp%253a%252f%252f4.bp.blogspot.com%252f_45x7euuIQwU%252fTVJ7U_pCR6I%252fAAAAAAAABHs%252f8psNhvLGiOg%252fs1600%252f47b05fcfb5ce801_fish.jpg&size=&name=search&rcurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bing.com%2Fimages%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dblobfish%23focal%3D7b8f7efc7da02484a331f723d8080bd0%26furl%3Dhttp%253a%252f%252f4.bp.blogspot.com%252f_45x7euuIQwU%252fTVJ7U_pCR6I%252fAAAAAAAABHs%252f8psNhvLGiOg%252fs1600%252f47b05fcfb5ce801_fish.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bing.com%2Fimages%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dblobfish%23focal%3D7b8f7efc7da02484a331f723d8080bd0%26furl%3Dhttp%253a%252f%252f4.bp.blogspot.com%252f_45x7euuIQwU%252fTVJ7U_pCR6I%252fAAAAAAAABHs%252f8psNhvLGiOg%252fs1600%252f47b05fcfb5ce801_fish.jpg&p=blobfish&type=&no=3&tt=115&oid=http%3A%2F%2Fts1.mm.bing.net%2Fimages%2Fthumbnail.aspx%3Fq%3D1343952328224%26id%3D765ff6e840dab46d34223a1b4a9bbd87&tit=Safari+Notes%3A+The+Blobfish+or+the+Blob+Sculpin&sigr=16jbmbscd&sigi=16c5ume28&sigb=11i5as13s&fr=yfp-t-701
jl
naked mole rat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nacktmull.jpg
jl
newt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Notophthalmus_viridescensPCCA20040816-3983A.jpg
Oops.
Newt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Newt_Gingrich_by_Gage_Skidmore_3.jpg
AA+ Bonds
@Omnes Omnibus:
I am actually doing what I said and not what you said. Here’s a rule of thumb: no surrender, no quarter. No talking about how one of these fuckers is better than the other.
AA+ Bonds
@somethingblue:
^ see, look at this good comment that owns both me and Huntsman at the same time
William Hurley
@Yutsano:
Right on cue Y. I find your paranoid puritanism to be more reminiscent of uncompromising rightists and “Little Red Book” waving Maoists than of any actual Democrat or democrat.
Are you sure you’re not the rat? Right-wingers are reflexively proud of accusing their enemies of the very crimes they themselves are secretly committing. Now that description fits your posting patterns to a “T”.
Robert Sneddon
It’s worth pointing out the UK’s ConDem alliance has put the income tax rate up to 50% for those earning more than UKP 150,000 while at the same time reducing taxation levels for low-earners and folks living off savings. They’re going after the banks again with yet another levy on debt instruments, targetting the CDOs and CDSes to make them less attractive to the Super Geniuses who spawned them in the first place. They also cut defence spending massively, shutting down Nimrod AEW development almost as soon as they were elected as well as pink-slipping thousands of servicepeople in a major Forces reduction programme.
It’s not enough but it’s a start, all sorts of things the US government is either reluctant to do or vehemently opposed to (and I include the Democrats in that too).
William Hurley
@PeakVT:
Oh well. Your loss is my gain.
Check-in with me on or after Nov 7th next year and I’ll “‘splains” t’ya’ whaaahhapunned?
William Hurley
@jl:
It’s safe to say that any GOPer would be a bad President – especially as the result of this cycle’s outcomes. On top of the precarious socio-economic situation the nation is in – and will be in on election day next year – ushering in a Republican President and a Republican Congress (both chambers) will lock America into a course of self-destruction.
That is why its vitally important for the Democratic Party to put forth a candidate who can win.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@burnspbesq: Well, when Miliband was selected, the main other alternatives were the other Miliband, and Balls? What an unfortunate name, that.
NR
@AA+ Bonds:
Um, the Democrats have already done everything you just mentioned.
Slash spending: See the “trigger” plan they put in place, which is going into effect now that the Supercommittee has failed.
Kill jobs: See the multitude of “free” trade plans the Democrats support.
Soak the poor: See the end of the “Making Work Pay” tax credit, to say nothing of the fact that Obama wanted to cut $650 billion from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Give to the rich: See the extension of the Bush tax cuts.
Deregulate Wall Street: See the Democratic support for the repeal of Glass-Steagall.
Deregulate pollution: See Obama’s smog rule, which is now even worse than it was under Bush.
So…. Remind me again why I’m supposed to be scared of Huntsman?
General Stuck
@NR:
It’s Saturday night. Why aren’t you performing at the local circus with all the other clowns? Instead of posting bullshit on a blog.
NR
@General Stuck: The only bullshit here is what’s coming from your mouth, sycophant.
General Stuck
@NR:
Yawn. Keep fucking those rats, NR. No one does it like you do. need a clean rag?
Singular
A labour man all my life, I voted LibDem in the last GE.
I wanted to “teach Labour a lesson” for the Iraq war.
(/facepalm)