.
At a time where everything seems to have fallen into the hands of idiots, crooks, and crooked idiots, I give thanks for Mr. Charles P. Pierce and his pigbladdering of the latest Politico “competence” blather:
… Given the choice between “competence” and a guy who promises to protect them from the scary monsters of his own shrewd creation, “the American people” will choose the latter every time. (And, if the rhetoric surrounding recent events here and abroad is any indication, 2016 is going to be a fertile year for the mongering of unmoored terror.) However, Tiger Beat on the Potomac declines to address this salient concern, the better to send that Competence Gap notion aloft on great gusts of unmitigated hot air. Moreover — and, geez, it gets boring typing this over and over again — the problem with Washington is not “dysfunction.” It is vandalism. It is not incompetence. It is the deliberate sabotage of the institutions of government by one half of the American political system….
Do I care what Mark McKinnon thinks about “competence” in the presidency, McKinnon having helped foist C-Plus Augustus on us, a man who has to dial 1 and an area code to reach “ignorant”?
Nope. I don’t…
Republican operatives and fundraisers believe the new environment would help former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and governors like Scott Walker of Wisconsin, John Kasich of Ohio, or Mike Pence of Indiana if they get into the race – and even Chris Christie of New Jersey or Rick Perry of Texas, despite their recent troubles.
So, to get us across Competence Gap, and because I am not wise in the ways of swallows, not being a king or anything, we have the Terri Schiavo Meddler With The Cursed Surname, The Endlessly Investigated Goggle-Eyed Homunculus Who Promised 250,000 New Jobs And Fell Miserably Short, The Formerly Youthful Phenom Who Got His Ass Kicked Around The Block In Ohio, A Human Fencepost, Another Endlessly Investigated Guy Who Took Firemen’s Pensions And Handed Them Over To Pirates, and An Actually Indicted Guy. If it’s all the same, I’ll stay off the bridge and take the long way around, thanks…
***********
Apart from taking one’s pleasures where one finds them, what’s on the agenda for the day?
Mustang Bobby
A look at the calendar this morning reminded me that last weekend marked the 22nd anniversary of my sobriety.
Dog knows there have been enough reasons to break it in the last couple of decades, but so far so good.
raven
@Mustang Bobby: We’re right on the same schedule. I’m 22 in April, not too shabby.
Mustang Bobby
@raven: Not too shabby indeed.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mustang Bobby: @raven: Careful guys, I wouldn’t celebrate too much just yet. The GOP primaries for President are just around the corner, and just the thought of these guys has me considering an anti-freeze cocktail at 5:05 am. You 2 will be sorely tested over the next 25 months.
ps: congrats
Mustang Bobby
@OzarkHillbilly: Thanks, but remember that I’m a theatre scholar and a Marxist — as in Groucho — so I look on that cast of characters as rich plucking for sardonic humor.
As Lord Byron put it, “And if I laugh at any mortal thing, ’tis that I may not weep.”
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Same as it ever was. Honestly, “The Roosevelts” reminded me of just how little has changed. I know it’s fun to jump up and down and scream, “it’s never been this bad”, but it has always been like this. As a kicker I’m reading the Reagan book and I’m still on the Watergate part. This shit is just normal.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mustang Bobby: Four years ago for me a few weeks ago, Sept 19.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: The only real “recovery” thing I went to was the Wharf Rats meeting at the intermission of a Dead show in Charlotte. There were people there that had been straight for 25 years and some for 25 minutes. Nice bunch of folks.
raven
Off to the VA, I hope they have the hearing aid today! I lost my wallet and it happens that the DMV is right up the road and I need to renew for my 65th anyway so I have my original birth certificate, social security card and two bills to further ID me!
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Never been to any meetings, couldn’t walk the first month or so after my time in the local infirmary. The closes I got to a Dead show was walking by Pauley when they were playing inside.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: Aw man, their show at the Fox in St Louis in 1972 was killer!!!!!! And Madison, 73, ya had to be there!
Schlemazel
My congratulations to you guys on the wagon. I come from a family that has had many who should have taken that ride. One of the rare shitty things that has missed me is that curse. I can have a beer when I get home or a glass of wine with dinner & never feel an urge that I must have more. To forgo that tiny pleasure would be tough. You guys have grit to quote a movie. Well done all of you.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mustang Bobby: @raven: Well, I was joking but somehow or other I don’t think any of us will be laughing if one of those jackasses gets elected.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: SOME jackass will most certainly be elected.
Mustang Bobby
@raven: I went through the license renewal here in Florida back in June. Same routine: I needed less proof of ID than I did when I got my first passport.
When I took the required eye test, I warned the guy that with strabismus (crossed eyes), it could be interesting. I took the test, he said, “Close enough for jazz,” and set me loose again on the road.
Schlemazel
@raven:
I guess I grew up in a golden bubble. Minnesota during the Ike & JFK administrations was a clean government/decent politics place for the most part. I heard tales of the treatment FDR got but they were history. There were a few anti-JFK crackpots pushing “None Dare Call It Treason” but they were treated like crackpots. Heck there was an old lady that had a booth in one of the most prominent spots at the state fair (a huge deal in MN) pushing christian tracts & holocaust denial pamphlets. But most everyone avoided her too. I knew a few Republicans who held office to be decent & honorable folks, many spoke against Goldwater in ’64 and more who while remaining silent didn’t vote for him. But they started to get driven out with Nixon & the crazy became stronger.
satby
@Schlemazel: What Schlemazel said, congratulations to everyone celebrating any years of sobriety. Watching the wreckage caused by alcoholism over my lifetime and seeing so many fail at it, successes are to be admired.
satby
@Schlemazel: I don’t know how old you are, but I’m going to be 60 my next birthday and I remember all that too. Historically, I know that Goldwater’s loss was the catalyst for the right-wing 30 year plan to mainstream their world view, but I really am stunned at how gullible people are. And the older I get, how mean people can be too.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: HA! (I can laugh now….)
raven
@Schlemazel: Shit, the pukes attacked FDR’s sons WHILE they were in combat. I seem to recall some “incident” with JFK too?
Phylllis
@Mustang Bobby: I had corrective strabismus surgery back in May; have you looked into that? My eye dr was kinda lukewarm on it but I’ve had great results. Noticeable decrease in fatigue & eye strain. Had mine done at the Medical University in Charleston & sorry I didn’t push for it sooner.
Chris
@raven:
Sadly, this. Pretty much the most depressing thing in current American politics: It’s only a matter of time before voter fatigue, an insufficiently inspiring Democratic candidate, a badly run campaign, or plain old Florida 2000 type shenanigans put a Republican back in the White House. And pretty much ANY politician of the Republican persuasion will be a disaster.
JPL
@raven:
Those Angry Days by Lynne Olsen is a good read about the dysfunction during the FDR years.
Mustang Bobby
@Phylllis: Tried it twice: once when I was 13 months old and again when I was nine. Didn’t take, and since I’m programmed for monocular vision, I’m okay with it. It’s never hindered me from driving or even taking flying lessons. It makes playing tennis problematic, but I don’t play it, and it saves me from paying for the 3-D goggles at the movies.
debbie
@Mustang Bobby:
Had the operation back in 6th grade and it’s now back after 40 years. Hate it, but I”m not about to go through that operation again.
Phylllis
@debbie: My surgeon told me it could begin to reverse over time. Which, if it happens after I retire, who cares. I’ve had an ideal result, and I know that doesn’t happen for everyone.
debbie
@Phylllis:
Glad it worked out for you. I’m sure it’s less traumatic to the eye now than it was when I had it. My eye was solid red, and it felt like it took forever for my eye to look like a normal eye.
Mustang Bobby
@Phylllis: I am very glad for you that it worked, and I hope for the best for you.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: His sons, hell, they attacked his dog.
OzarkHillbilly
@Phylllis: My little sis had the surgery when she was 1 yrs old. She just turned 50 and her eyes are still straight.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: That clip was really funny!
amk
Competence (R). problem solved.
beth
@BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, when I saw that part about them criticizing him for sending an aircraft carrier (?) to pick up his dog at the cost of millions I remembered a few years ago when they accused Obama of sending Bo on vacation in a separate airplane all by himself. These new Republicans are not only assholes; they’re unimaginative assholes.
Baud
The liberal war on the light bulbs continues apace.
I hope next year the Nobel goes to the inventor of the low flow toilet.
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly: I had strabismus correction surgery when I was about 7, and I’d say it was only about 90% corrected… my eyes still go all Marty Feldman when I get tired, and I see double frequently. But I’m probably in better shape than if I hadn’t had it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: They have a Nobel prize for plumbing?
Raven
@beth: It was a destroyer.
Raven
On September 23, 1944, Roosevelt opened the 1944 presidential campaign in Washington, D.C., speaking at a dinner with the International Teamsters Union. The half-hour speech was also broadcast on all U.S. radio networks.[6] In the speech, Roosevelt attacked Republican opponents in Congress and detailed their attacks on him. Late in the speech, Roosevelt addressed Republican charges that he had accidentally left Fala behind on the Aleutian Islands while on tour there and had sent a U.S. Navy destroyer to retrieve him at an exorbitant cost to the taxpayers:
Culture of Truth
I heard it was the space shuttle
Cervantes
The good folk at Politico do not, and will not, get the joke.
OzarkHillbilly
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, and I should note that my observations of little sis’ eyes are just that… My observations. For all I know, she has trouble at times. It’s not exactly a topic of regular discussion between us.
Botsplainer
@Baud:
After Obama’s squads of beret clad black Muslim lesbians come to every household with their rainbow-bedecked portable smelters and woodchippers to confiscate and destroy firearms on the spot – special glee to be displayed when they destroy the rifle your saintly white haired grandfather took you out plinking with when you were 9), they’ll send out Gaia priestess Marxist abortionists to confiscate incandescent bulbs after they forcibly gay marry every male over 12 to an Islamic atheist Black Panther.
Culture of Truth
Chris Christie is not competent. He give the impression by yelling and bullying being blunt and telling people to fuck off on the radio. Of course the media eats it up like giddy schoolgirls. The media frequently confuses being an asshole with comptence, because after all anyone who is that big a jerk must be good at something, right. But while Christie was yelling at people to get off the beach he let $120 million of trains be flooded parked at low-lying ground. Of course there was a media blackout on that subject.
D58826
. Love the dial one and area code line.
Baud
@Botsplainer:
Oh, great. Why don’t you just tell the whole world about Obama’s secret plan? Sheesh.
D58826
iT does seem strange that a political party that argues the US government is totally incompetent to run this country is on the other hand totally competent to invade and fix another country whose language, culture and history we do not understand!!
OzarkHillbilly
@Botsplainer: You forgot the Kenyan Death Panels.
Belafon
@OzarkHillbilly: it’s all physics.
glocksman
Jesus H Christ in a bucket.
So far, the Republican team for 2016 looks like a Clown Car.
That said, never underestimate the stenographers in the Village.
Since none of the so called ‘reporters’ never bother to investigate, Republican lies will be passed on without comment.
Never mind that most people trust reporters to call out lies when they’re told.
There are reasons why I have more respect for used car salesmen than I do the media establishment.
D58826
OT. The President of Turkey says a ground operation is needed to defeat ISIS. All the while the Turkish army sits and watches as the town of Kobane is over run by ISIS. Literally ‘watches’ since the town is only a couple of miles from the border.
On the Sunday talk shows the usual suspects talked up sending American troops to the region. It would be nice if someone asked – why do we need American troops when there are close to 750k soldiers in the combined militarizes of Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, etc. Why can’t these Sunni Muslim armies deal with 30,000 ISIS fighters? Exactly what is it that the American soldier can do that the soldiers of our NATO ally Turkey can’t do? (yea I know – fight). Biden got dumped on for simply telling the truth – it is a middle eastern problem that has to be solved by middle easterners.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
FlipYrWhig
@glocksman: I still don’t know if the media is a bunch of shallow idiots or a bunch of cynics convinced that their audience is a bunch of shallow idiots. Probably both. OK, maybe not “media” tout court but certainly pundits and newsreaders. It’s hard to believe that people that vapid can be considered at the top of their profession.
FlipYrWhig
@D58826: I’ve been wondering the same thing. Isn’t this whole situation tailor-made for the UN? You have a problem too big for individual nations to solve and where neighboring nations aren’t always trusted. So call on an international force to squelch the fighting and keep… the… peace. Maybe that’s pie in the sky, but it seems like a transnational problem calls for a transnational solution.
Kathleen
@Schlemazel: Yes, congratulations to all of you. It takes guts and discipline to deal with demons.
Schlemazel: I, too lived in Minnesota (St. Paul) from 1961 to 1967 and I agree that the political climate was pretty civilized and the candidates in the YDFL were pretty decent (there was an attempted coup however – some young bucks wanted to replace Karl Rolvaag as governor and run a young turk. My dad and I went to the state convention and it got a little crazy). Yes, we were spoiled – Humphrey, McCarthy, and Mondale were on the scene, JFK flew in for the annual Bean Feed a week or 2 before the Cuban Missle Crisis (I heard him speak), and the crazies were deemed “The Crazies”.
@Raven – congrats on reaching your 65th. I just turned 65 on Friday. MEDICARE!!! First time I’ve had health insurance in about 4 years.
D58826
@FlipYrWhig: I’m not sure that we can get the UN to agree, esp with China/Russia having veto power on the Security Council. But if the two or three countries most directly threatened can’t agree to work together and launch a co-ordinated military operation, I doubt that the UN would be much inclined to intervene. UN peace keeping forces work best once the opposing sides have exhausted themselves fighting and need a face saving way to back down from their previous belligerent positions.
Botsplainer
@OzarkHillbilly:
Rahm Emanuel’s brother and Bill Ayers run those. Saintly white grandmas will have to beg for their lives on a reality show by saying how much they did for black people.
The other programming that the government will fund heavily (so it is the only free TV) will consist of
– liberal secularist Jews sneering about the beliefs of Christianity and kvetching about Christmas
– liberal Catholic social activists speaking movingly about the plight of migrant workers
– married gay men describing the joy they feel in their sex lives
Frankensteinbeck
@raven:
There is not a difference in kind, but there is a difference in scale. If you need proof, look to the metrics of obstruction in Obama’s presidency, or the explosion of death threats. There have always been ridiculous accusations against American presidents, but they have never been so mainstream and so believed rather than mouthed as insults. Clown Car candidacies are not new, but situations where all the candidates are so wildly incompetent that an ‘also ran’ like Romney got the nod are at least unusual.
@FlipYrWhig:
Their profession is spinning bullshit, the skill necessary to stretch out very limited amounts of news 24 hours. Media talking heads are perfectly suited to their profession. And once the bullshit floated to the top, it befouled everything below it.
Botsplainer
Dang – forgot the Union Thug programming, where slabs of meat with heads go to the homes of sainted Jahb Kreator Small Businessmen and burn them out.
Frankensteinbeck
@Botsplainer:
I’m sorry, but you forgot the hour long block of pornographic music videos featuring black street thugs violating white girls, teaching them to enjoy sex and ruining them forever. If there’s anything that scares conservatives more, I can’t think of it.
Raven
@Kathleen: I got my hearing aid from the VA now I’m in the DMV for my drivers license!
OzarkHillbilly
@Botsplainer: You forgot about those godless heathen Paganists forcing us all to bow our heads in obeisance to the Devil!!!
Ruckus
@Botsplainer:
And?
What’s the downside?
Ruckus
@D58826:
Now you’re just trying to make sense.
Ruckus
@D58826:
Die.
OzarkHillbilly
@Frankensteinbeck: The babies that come of those unholy unions.
WaterGirl
I am computer less again so I haven’t been keeping up on threads. Has anyone seen violet yet?
MomSense
@Frankensteinbeck:
That’s the Republican approved public fear. The secret fear is that they will watch two dudes getting it on–and like it.
Debbie(aussie)
Re our war with ‘no boots on the ground’ daughters partner is on 24hour call, looks like we will be going in arghhhhhh. A total and utter waste. I detest the man who says he
“leads’ us. And my feelings towards Obama at the moment are not kind ( to say the least).
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
No, and I am just hoping that she is ok and getting support.
FlipYrWhig
@D58826: That makes perfect sense as a diagnosis of the actually-existing UN, but I wish the Hypothetical UN could be involved here, because if the task is to protect human rights and the international order, that’s the UN’s mission.
OzarkHillbilly
@Botsplainer: Ahhh yes, I well remember my first year class in Union Thuggery 101. The first thing they taught us was to aim low with our clubs. It was great fun to head out to the exercise yard and practice on each other. The 2nd thing they taught us was how to kick a rich job creator when he was down, because if you can’t kick them when their down, when can you kick them?
Debbie(aussie)
With regard to the latest ‘upset’ in the middle east,An interesting read from an Aussie economist I follow on the web http://insidestory.org.au/will-todays-allies-become-yet-again-tomorrows-enemies
WaterGirl
@MomSense: thanks for the update. I am hanging my hat on the thought that violet is tenacious, so hopefully not likely to give up for long. She’s so tired, though. Worrisome.
Debbie(aussie)
Bedtime for this tired no-war horse. Have a great day all, Deb
Frankensteinbeck
@MomSense:
I’m not denying the existence of that one. No hyperbole, they are terrified that the fact they’ve had a gay fantasy once in their lives will be revealed, making them the target of the same physical and social abuse they themselves have heaped upon anyone they suspect of insufficient masculinity. I would have said that was their greatest fear until I saw the racist freakout over Obama.
D58826
@Debbie(aussie): I’m afraid they are playing word games. There are boots on the ground already. The Special forces/forward air controllers/etc. as well as the boots guarding the embassy.
The ‘boots on the ground’ that Obama doesn’t want to send and MCNutts does are the 101st airborne/the first infantry and 3rd infantry, etc.
The special forces can keep a light footprint whereas the mainforce divisions makes it look like Iraq- part III and the crusaders are coming again.
Regardless some of those boots will not be coming home. One Marine has already been lost over the Persian Gulf.
SiubhanDuinne
@Raven:
CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW??
Edit: Seriously, congratulations. I know you’ve been waiting a long time.
boatboy_srq
@Mustang Bobby: Bravo.
17 months tobacco free for me…
@Schlemazel: @Schlemazel: a) I come from a fairly sober family, but tobacco killed at least one ancestor. Alcohol seems to be for me as for you: nobody better come for my brandy snifter of a cold evening, but I put it down after one shot. b) I grew up with coastal Maine politics. All of us knew that the local level was bent: there was a small-scale machine that ran things. None of that made it far in Augusta, though, and from the state level upward things were reasonably above-board. Watching the lunacy of late (Collins and LePage spring immediately to mind) has been disappointing to put it mildly.
@Mustang Bobby: My FL REAL ID DL was just as much fun to get a few years back. Naturally, Virginia is not a REAL ID state, though they have similar requirements, so getting my VA DL meant going through all those hoops again. The folder I took to DMV was an inch thick, just to hold the birth cert, passport, utility bills, insurance papers and all the other BLEEP that VA needed to be convinced I was a real person. You’d think that even the states’ rights shouters would admit that other states’ documents and forms would be respected…
Cervantes
@D58826:
There is no such thing as a “middle eastern problem” so long as foreign governments, including primarily ours, are involved in so many ways with so many countries there. Three obvious examples: Israel, Iraq, Saudi Arabia.
If you could remove foreign governments from the picture, and with them the corporations that fund them and are funded by them, then what you have left might be a “a middle eastern problem that has to be solved by middle easterners.”
Mike in NC
Local paper ran an op-ed today by a GOP party chairman in SC, urging people to reelect Nikki Haley and her minions in order to keep the state “moving forward”.
Somehow I can’t picture the words “South Carolina” and “moving forward” in the same sentence.
Cervantes
@Debbie(aussie):
I like Quiggin. He has a sense of humor — difficult to maintain given many of the things he writes about.
JustRuss
Aaack, every time I come here now I’m greeted by an ad for Art Robinson, featuring his demented-looking mug. Can’t wait til the election’s over. On the other hand, the fact that BJ is sucking a few bucks from his campaign makes me happy.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
Eisenhower-era tax rates.
Roger Moore
@Cervantes:
FTFY.
Cervantes
@Roger Moore: Sure, that’s a big part of it, I agree.
Wally Ballou
St. Louis Cardinals fans are fine people.
http://deadspin.com/cardinals-fans-get-ugly-in-clash-with-ferguson-proteste-1643282285
As a Tiger fan who’s still bitter over 2006, I welcome any and all additional reasons to root against the Redbirds, but this is some fucked up shit.
Mnemosyne
@Wally Ballou:
It’s always funny to me when people with obvious leisure time on their hands since they’re attending a baseball game demand to know why other people aren’t working while they’re taking time off.
And by “funny” I mean “enraging.”
catclub
@Roger Moore: I would put it the other way. Once there is no oil there, there won’t be any middle eastern problems. Remember how invisibility works. SEP field.
Someone Else’s Problem.
shortstop
Pretty sure Bruce Rauner just handed Quinn reelection.
stinger
@Botsplainer: I heard part of a Koch Bros. ad this morning, something about the evils of legislation to prevent gun owners from selling one of their guns to “a LIFELONG FRIEND or FAMILY MEMBER”. Any such law would surely be about background checks, but something about the idea of teabaggers selling guns left and right to “lifelong friends” just cracks me up, I don’t know why.
Tenar Darell
According to Chait, liberals have got football wrong. Anyone else notice it?
Article made me double-take, and SNL Weekend Update “Really? Really?” I’m gonna flag him for straw manning, stereotyping, and more later, when my jaw comes up off the floor. (I will admit, when he speaks from personal experience, it wasn’t so bad, but the punditacular extrapolation was just sad. Makes me think he’s trolling).
zippity
@shortstop: What did I miss???
Cervantes
@catclub:
And at that point what do you see happening in Israel and Palestine?