Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

I really should read my own blog.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Let’s finish the job.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

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

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

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

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

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

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Consistently wrong since 2002

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / Open Thread: King of the Pig Factories

Open Thread: King of the Pig Factories

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He’s common as pig tracks, and happy as a pig in… muck. The Des Moines Register on their hometown hero’s current plans:

Iowa’s Steve King is expanding his footprint as a presidential kingmaker.

The conservative congressman with the fitting last name is launching his own annual multicandidate forum for presidential hopefuls…

The inaugural Iowa Freedom Summit will be in Des Moines on Saturday, Jan. 24, more than a year from the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. King’s co-host is Citizens United, a conservative organization best known for influencing campaign finance in this country.

Three Republicans who are seriously weighing 2016 presidential bids are already booked as headline speakers for the summit, which will have no cost to attend: Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and former Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum.

Every Republican who’s thinking about a White House bid has been invited, King told the Register.

The kingmaker universe in Iowa is growing increasingly more crowded, with U.S. Sen.-elect Joni Ernst now on the scene, along with the forceful figures of U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley and newly re-elected Gov. Terry Branstad, who just engineered a wholesale takeover of the state party headquarters….

Presidential candidates have long courted King’s stamp of approval. He gave his blessing to Fred Thompson in the 2008 presidential cycle, although not until just a couple of weeks before the caucuses, blunting the effectiveness of the endorsement. In the 2012 cycle, he came close to endorsing Mitt Romney, but ended up holding off his praise for the former Massachusetts governor until after the caucuses.

King told the Register that he will endorse this cycle…

My cynical DFH interpretation: Rep. “calves the size of cantaloupes” King has now got some hardcore local competition for the dumb hateful xenophobe demographic, and he thinks he may have hoarded his endorsements a little too long during the Obama elections. So he’s advertising his services for the new cycle immediately, and simultaneously announcing his partnership with Citizens United, who (for this one event) will provide the free lunch…

Would it be wrong to pray for an outbreak of norovirus at the conference hotel?

Reader Interactions

87Comments

  1. 1.

    Mnemosyne

    So did Citizens United actually change their name, or is the MSM still censoring their full name?

    (For those unaware, they were originally set up as an anti-Hillary group and their full name is Citizens United Not Timid. Har har.)

  2. 2.

    pseudonymous in nc

    Would it be wrong to pray for an outbreak of norovirus at the conference hotel?

    Either Steve Racist King purges the kitchens of suspicious swarthy types, or the buffet platters at the Iowa Whiteys For Whiteys Summit are going to serve up more bodily fluids than spring break.

  3. 3.

    Arthur

    OK, it’s an open thread and this is a totally off the wall topic/post.

    Please explain to me how our bathroom sinks are filled with hair.

    Every few months, I have to clear both bathroom sink stoppers of long hair. I have repeatedly asked my wife and daughter to empty their brushes/combs into the trash cans right next to the sinks. Yet, I still have to take the stoppers out, remove the hair and replace.

    Both of my wonderful women color their hair, and they perform the task in the utility sink in the laundry room. I have zero problems cleaning that sink…even after a coloring job that makes our utility sink look as if a smurf was killed and gutted in said sink.

    Are there elves that show up and choke our drains with hair?

    Please, help me understand.

  6. 6.

    Morzer

    @Arthur:

    Are there elves that show up and choke our drains with hair?

    Don’t be silly. Everyone knows that it’s pixies who do the hair-leaving.

  9. 9.

    Morzer

    A more rewarding subject than Steve King:

    http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/nov/19/adrienne-truscott-the-day-i-lost-my-job-for-linda-mccartney

    The next thing I knew, I was penning a letter to this man à la Victoria Woodhull. I couldn’t give you a reason why it was happening like this. I was more of a John and Yoko girl. But I wrote to him that I had heard his idiotic comment about Linda McCartney and her cancer and lambasted him for his callousness, his unfeeling and abject dismissal of another human being who had done little wrong in the world, his arrogance, his meanness. I employed conjunctions no longer in vogue or even in use.

    But I saved the worst for his appearance.

    I told him that if the cruelly democratic criteria of cancer’s assault were indeed to baulk and retreat at the challenge of “conventional ugliness”, then his balding, corpulent, mottled, unshapely, narrow-eyed form, itself a display of his ignorance and ugliness, was surely the best insurance he could hope to have for a long and cancer-free life. And I ended it by saying: “What’s the betting that when I give you this note, and say a little coyly, ‘Read this when you have a private moment,’ you will smile knowingly at me and humour yourself that it is a cute, almost conventionally attractive waitress, coming on to you, a man of means.”

    He left the restaurant. I walked calmly to the phone and called my boss, an overwhelmed Frenchman who had the day off. I told him he would have to fire me by day’s end, briefly explained the circumstances, ordered lunch and waited. It was a slow day. Lunch was delicious.

    It’s a great read, educational and, sometimes, laugh out loud funny. There’s even an uplifting ending. Sort of.

  10. 10.

    Morzer

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Son, son, son.. who do you think the pixies work for?

    Honestly, when I see this level of wilful, sinful, spiteful ignorance among the broad masses, I just want to despair and do horrible, filthy, gratifying things to a large piece of chocolate.

  13. 13.

    lamh36

    Last bit for the night but I’ll probably repost on tonorrow.

    Ok. Today’s hell naw tv news…apparently this is supposed to be going on:

    Fox Developing Remake of BBC’s ‘Luther’ with Creator Neil Cross
    http://m.imdb.com/news/ni58021674

    Now look, I’m on record as loving Idris Elba. I love Luther and would love another series of the show (or even the feature length film that’s been bandied about), but the idea of a US version without Idris Elba as Luther just does not seem promising. It’d be just like another police procedural on network tv.

    I know Fox did it with Broadchurch but no offense to Dr Who fans, but the US version of Broachchurch could definitely have happened with or without David Tennant and no one would care (and apparently no one watched it much). For anyone who has seen Luther, Idris Elba brings something to the character that makes him something more than just a weird cop who occasionally seems to work a bit outside of protocol.

    I honestly can’t even begin to imagine who they’d get to play Luther or Alice.

    Yeah, I’m too keen on this development.

  15. 15.

    Morzer

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    And now you’ve fallen for the idea that the Yetis are wearing their real hair! Didn’t you ever stop and ask yourself why Donald Trump’s upper cranial covering looked… familiar?

    C’mon, man! The truth is out there! You just have to look for it!

  16. 16.

    Morzer

    @Hungry Joe:

    Seems almost unfair on the norovirus to me. The poor critter is probably shaking all over and asking its online friends why bubonic plague gets to miss this assignment.

  18. 18.

    Arthur

    @Mike J: Thank you for the trip down memory lane.

    Last Christmas me wife gave me the complete set of Ren and Stimpy. She wrapped it up with a log pillow…..it’s log, it’s log, it’s better than bad it’s good!

  22. 22.

    divF

    @Hungry Joe: I vote for Legionnaires’ disease. Especially if you can make all the candidates wear fezzes.

    ETA: Ha! Beat Howard Beale IV by a nose (I think).

  26. 26.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @Violet: That post sets off all my woo/bad science sensors. What is a historian doing writing about the evolution of sleep? Why aren’t there links or full references to the cited expert sources? Is the book scholarly? Is the work scholarly? Anyone can publish a book these days, doesn’t mean the inner bits are real.

    I’m totally open to the idea that different people’s bodies do different things (i’ve needed at least 7 hours of solid sleep my whole life just to be functional, my dad is at his sharpest when he sleeps 4-5 hours a day – more than that and he’s a mess), but a rawstory post advocating un-cited and unreferenced ‘science’ is definitely not proof. [/scientist rant]

  27. 27.

    Roger Moore

    Would it be wrong to pray for an outbreak of norovirus at the conference hotel?

    Yes. You should be praying for something substantially deadlier, like Ebola or a meteor strike.

  30. 30.

    Morzer

    @TheMightyTrowel:

    I was a little surprised to see the Odyssey apparently cited as evidence of ancient sleep patterns. The piece could have used a bit more indepth review of the book and a bit less acceptance at face value.

  33. 33.

    divF

    @Roger Moore:

    Not permitted. Fezzes are cool, so the Republican candidates may not wear them.

    You’re right. Sigh – I was so hoping for Presidential debates in fezzes.

  34. 34.

    Roger Moore

    @divF:

    Sigh – I was so hoping for Presidential debates in fezzes.

    I think we’re a lot closer to a Presidential debate in white robes and dunce caps.

    ETA: That’s where the Klown Kar Kaukus seems to be headed.

  35. 35.

    Violet

    @TheMightyTrowel: Who else would write about the evolution of sleep but a historian of some kind? Someone has to go back and review literature and other historical works to study the issue. Maybe a medical historian but how is a scientist going to look at the sleep patterns of the ancient Romans in any substantially better way than a historian?

    As for not having full references, most casual articles don’t have full scholarly citations in them. It’s not hard to find the publications should you be interetsed. For example, here’s the history of sleep paper from the American Historical Review. The author, A. Robert Ekirch, is a professor of history at Virginia Tech. It’s a scholarly publication.

    Here’s the bio on Thomas Wehr who conducted the sleep study:

    Thomas Alvin Wehr, scientist emeritus at the National Institute of Mental Health is a psychiatrist, research scientist, author, and former chief of the Clinical Psychobiology branch at NIMH.

    So yeah, he’s a scientist.

  36. 36.

    Suzanne

    @Arthur: Some people, especially those with coarse hair like me, shed like crazyballs. I don’t know how I have hair left on my head. I wash it once a week and a whole handful comes out, and yet my hair is still thick. Anyway, my sink fills up with hair, too, even if I’m careful. It falls out on the counter while I’m primping, then slides down the drain and grabs gunk. I told Mr. Suzanne that I do the hair for both of us, since I shave his head.

  39. 39.

    Mnemosyne

    @Mary G:

    It’s too bad Yatsuno hasn’t been around as much lately — he could commiserate with you about the cruelty (and yet helpfulness) of physical therapists.

    But … yay walking!

  40. 40.

    divF

    @Suzanne:
    Regardless of the nominee, that is the kind of “wit” we have to look forward to from the R’s – unfunny, crude, and hateful.

  41. 41.

    Violet

    @Suzanne: I can only hope that if Hillary is the nominee and the misogyny is in full display it might open the eyes of some of the married white women who reliably vote Republican.

  42. 42.

    Mnemosyne

    @Suzanne:

    Yep, coupled with clueless dudes on “our side”** going, I don’t see what’s so bad about that. You just need to have a sense of humor.

    (**Present company excepted, of course.)

  43. 43.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @Violet: So was Linus Pauling, doesn’t mean his thoughts on Vitamin C were worth the paper they were written on.

    As an archaeologist, I can tell you that anything a historian draws from ancient roman writing and then applies uncritically to the present day – or even attempts to universalise out to all people alive 2000 years ago – is hokum. pure 100% unadultered hokum.

  44. 44.

    Violet

    @TheMightyTrowel: Since the article and the references contained within do not meet your standards, feel free to ignore my comment about the article and the article itself. There was a discussion about insomnia earlier today and I thought some people dealing with sleep issues might find the article interesting and the idea worth investigating for their own purposes. You apparently are not one of those people.

  45. 45.

    ruemara

    By the time I get home after work, 40 mins on the treadmill and a 75 minute weightlifting class, then cook a healthy dinner, I sit down and start to doze off like I’m on premium grade heroin. How do people have social lives again? I think I’m doing it wrong. I have 3 more evenings of workouts before my saturday off day. I feel so flabulously fit.

  46. 46.

    Mnemosyne

    Since the people touting this kitten cam don’t seem to be around tonight, here are the Kittens of Oz, born yesterday. (They can be a little hard to see because momma cat is black and most of the kittens are also dark, but what you can see is frickin’ adorable.)

  48. 48.

    opiejeanne

    “…He gave his blessing to Fred Thompson in the 2008 presidential cycle,…”

    Ok, that made me laugh.

  52. 52.

    Joel Hanes

    @Violet:

    it might open the eyes of some of the married white women who reliably vote Republican

    If I’ve learned anything, it’s that people mostly don’t change much.

  54. 54.

    PurpleGirl

    @lamh36: I was a fan of ITV’s Cracker. Really liked it with Robbie Coltrane. But the American version with a different lead actor (Robert Pastorelli) was just not Cracker. It didn’t work for me. (And I had liked Pastorelli on Candace Bergen’s show.)

  55. 55.

    Another Holocene Human

    So many things making me ragey lately even good news making me ragey. Could be effects of The Cold That Wouldn’t Quit. Dunno. But apparently the Federal Gov’t now in 2014 wants to say that AI/AN children are subject to more violence than any other ethnic group in the USA and maybe they outta do something about it… YA FUCKEN THINK? A little late now, two houses of CONgress controlled by GOP. Very Indian-friendly bunch.

    (Even the Dems suck unless they come from certain states, for the most part.)

    Nothing’s going to get done for another decade or two, unless we can beat the odds and get another Dem legislative branch. Especially the House, because it’s full of the crazee christers–the corporate logo’d Senators tend to be less nutty on stuff that doesn’t harm bidnis interests.

  56. 56.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Arthur: Bathroom sinks suck so much ass. You said it yourself, “utility”.

    Just get that special drano for hair clogs. It has enzymes. Use every 6 months.

    There are things to catch hair for showers but meh, bathroom sink fuggedaboudit. My wife doesn’t wash her hair in the sink yet somehow the hair is there. Combined with who knows what unmentionable goo. Mostly soap, actually.

    Foam soap won’t gunk that thing as much IF your family is willing to use it. My wife insists on bar soap … oh and she doesn’t see dirt so doesn’t do the cleaning … I used to get really mad but now I’m used to it after a decade of this … and now I use the fingernail brush to clean the soap out of the sink bowl so I guess don’t use that in my house. Tsk tsk bad me.

  57. 57.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Omnes Omnibus: Maybe if they live in Florida but you know habitat loss due to wild pigs, you can’t outforage the things.

    Shaving Yetis and releasing them into the Yukon to die of exposure is like the definition of interspecies cruelty. I hope you’re proud of yourself, Omnes!

  58. 58.

    Another Holocene Human

    @lamh36: I didn’t really like Luther, in some sense it seemed sort of American already with the lurid focus on “quirky” serial killers and the obsession with the killers’ POV. (They seemed to be cast for their faces, lol.) It also seemed like a filmed comic book, which isn’t really a good thing.

    Other thing I never liked about Luther is (while a lot of cops IRL do have anger issues) the character seemed to fit certain stereotypes of a Black dude with anger/jealousy issues. Othello, even. You could easily just say it’s an homage to PRIME SUSPECT but LUTHER isn’t half as smart as the first series of that show. I can’t think of any other British cop show with a white protagonist who has quite the personal issues the titular character in LUTHER does, no, not even MORSE. Oh, sure, he’s a waspish drunk and he tries to date suspects in murder inquiries but he’s always this caricature of a perfect gentleman with women. So not exactly the same thing.

  59. 59.

    Another Holocene Human

    @TheMightyTrowel: I’ve heard a lot about this from woo-ists as well, however, there does seem to be legitimate historical research on it.

    Probably had a lot to do with the days getting shorter and lighting being very expensive.

    Look at when people in Spain have dinner, their daily cycle — just goes to show that what we consider normal today in Anglo-Saxon* countries isn’t normative everywhere.

    *-such a misnomer, Saxony not even counted

  60. 60.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Morzer: That’s not ridiculous farfetched. There was a whole story about weather in the Odyssey in an issue of EOS once. It was very detailed. Those ancient Aegean sailors didn’t mess around.

    ETA: Damn, nobody’s up.

  62. 62.

    Morzer

    @Another Holocene Human:

    What’s ridiculous about it is that the Odyssey, to the extent that it features sleep, depicts it as, essentially, a go to bed at night and wake up in the morning phenomenon. Not much support there for the two sleeps theory. And that’s before we even get into the issue of whether the Odyssey is historical/fact-based in any way.

  64. 64.

    Botsplainer

    @TheMightyTrowel:

    My youngest daughter is going to be an archaeologist. She’s at UC, has lined up mentors, getting solid As. She is steering somewhat toward archaeobotany and life in pastoral societies, it appears.

    Last summer she was the only undergraduate on the team at a site in Albania. This summer, she’s approved to Iklaina, in the Peloponnese.

  65. 65.

    Botsplainer

    @Morzer:

    It is. I was exhausted yesterday after three dives and went to bed about 8 pm Atlantic time.

    We did two boat dives in the morning, then after getting our shit together into clunky rental trucks, drove to the southern end of the island for a shore dive – it was a ton of work to go in off the beach. Water was rough, and coming back, each one of us nearly busted our ass, hence the exhaustion.

    Plus, these have all been long, exceeding an hour.

    The funniest part of the beach dive was eight guys checking compasses and guessing navigation at the end, nobody wanting to wimp out and check the surface for the location of the trucks because THAT would be like asking for directions.

    Slept really well. I’m going to head down to the dock now to see if anybody is inclined to dawn dive.

  66. 66.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Morzer: How was the Kimchi making session? When I took Korean(cough, 20, cough years ago), I was surprised that there was a word in Korean for “making kimchi for the winter”.

  68. 68.

    raven

    Nice editorial by a Republican about the new congresscritter, Jody Hice, who will represent Athens,

    We had a clear choice this year in District 10. We could have chosen a moderate, a pragmatist willing to work with the other side to compromise and get things done. Instead, we elected another Ted Cruz or, more accurately, a small-time Rush Limbaugh. We got a congressman who implied (via large Soviet hammer-and-sickle billboards) that the president of the United States is a Communist. Since this same individual was elected twice by the majority of voting Americans, what does Hice think of all of us? Are we all dupes of the world-wide communist conspiracy?

    As is often said, we get the government that we deserve. Shamefully, in the case of the 10th District, that translates to more irresponsible government shutdowns, counterproductive debt-ceiling showboating and Tea Party obstructionism.

    Jack Bernard is a former Jasper County commissioner and GOP county chairman.

  69. 69.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @Botsplainer: You’ve mentioned that before. Look, i’m sure she has great mentors and is on track, but if she wants to talk to a RL woman archaeologist (and an academic) about future plans etc I’m happy to sort out a way to go ‘off the page’ and email. Always happy to support young women in my field!!

  75. 75.

    Morzer

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    I am told it was a great success, although I personally dislike kimchi (yes, I know, of all the cultures in the world to marry into, how did I pick the Korean one?). My mother in law was much gratified both by my cooking and by the fact that, apparently, no man in the family has ever cooked for her before. This is both sad and unsurprising, but I shall do my best to remedy the situation over time. She loves Ray Charles, so I found a good compilation and kimchi making proceeded to the sound of the master’s voice, with some occasional dancing thrown in.

    By a strange coincidence, today I found a haiku in which Basho mentions daikon:

    mi ni shimite Penetrating the body
    daikon karashi daikon’s spiciness
    aki no kaze the autumn wind

  76. 76.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven:

    Once more, these are the un-American beliefs of someone who is not within the mainstream of the GOP, our country or this district.

    With all due respect Jack, those beliefs actually appear to be within the mainstream of your district. It’s not like people didn’t know JH was was a 14th century cretin before the election.

  81. 81.

    Chopper

    25 this morning in ATL. Wifey is in San Francisco this week (lucky!) so the two kids are of course sick.

    Dog wants to go on a run. Great.

  83. 83.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Morzer: My wife took me out on our first date for Korean food, if I didn’t take a liking to it, that would be the end of our relationship. Kalbi I had eaten once before(but didn’t know what it was) and I didn’t have any problems with kimchi. Now kimchi soup is a true test if you can live with a Korean. My wife would usually apologize to the neighbors after making it.

  84. 84.

    Cervantes

    @Mnemosyne:

    So did Citizens United actually change their name, or is the MSM still censoring their full name? (For those unaware, they were originally set up as an anti-Hillary group and their full name is Citizens United Not Timid. Har har.)

    Two separate and unrelated organizations.

    “Citizens United” was founded in 1988. Nowadays it is associated with David Bossie.

    “Citizens United Not Timid” was founded in 2008. It is associated with Roger Stone.

  85. 85.

    Dave

    Would it be wrong to pray for an outbreak of norovirus at the conference hotel?

    My vote would be for Ebola.

  87. 87.

    Cervantes

    @Mnemosyne:

    No, the court case was filed by Bossie’s group, the original Citizens United.

    Stone’s group hasn’t done much since its founding, partly because Bossie’s group immediately sent a cease-and-desist letter complaining about trademark infringement, i.e., that the “name was deliberately appropriated in order to capitalize on the release of the documentary [sic] film Hillary: The Movie.”

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