Walker’s early homestate enablers at the Bradley Foundation’s “tiny empire” and the MacIver Institute must be madly jealous tonight. As happens so often in this fallen world, their long-groomed figurehead candidate has been stolen away by the bigger predators. Nicholas Confessore, reporting for the NYTimes:
Charles G. and David H. Koch, the influential and big-spending conservative donors, have a favorite in the race for the Republican nomination: Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.
On Monday, at a fund-raising event in Manhattan for the New York State Republican Party, David Koch told donors that he and his brother, who oversee one of the biggest private political organizations in the country, believed that Mr. Walker was the Republican Party’s best hope for recapturing the White House.
“We will support whoever the candidate is,” said Mr. Koch, according to two people who attended the event. “But it should be Scott Walker.” …
In his remarks, made after Mr. Walker had addressed the group, Mr. Koch suggested that the political organizations they oversee — which include Americans for Prosperity, a grass-roots organization, and Freedom Partners, a donor trade group with an affiliated super PAC — would not intervene in the Republican primary process on behalf of a single candidate.
But according to the two attendees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely describe the remarks, Mr. Koch indicated that the Koch family might personally offer financial support to Mr. Walker…
Speaking his personal opinion as just another individual John Birch Society legacy multibillionaire with a history of buying politicians, principal among them Governor Scott Walker, of course. Man isn’t even trying to keep his political manipulations on the down low any more. But then, he isn’t a young or a healthy man, there have been scares, despite his best efforts he’s not yet been able to buy physical immortality. David Koch probably figures he can’t afford to wait another four to eight years to cement his standing in Hell and the history books as the man who singlehandedly bought his sockpuppet into the Oval Office, the way lessor mortal would buy a famous artwork or a trophy mansion.
David Koch
The reality of Scott Walker as a dead-eyed Blank Person has already taken root:
Swift resignation of Scott Walker aide raises questions of campaign viability
Scott Walker is an Empty Suit
even the wingnuts at Brietbart say:
Baud
I wish that would put an end to the “the Kochs support gay marriage and criminal justice reform” crap, but it won’t.
Cacti
I would actually prefer Scott Wanker is the GOP nominee.
He’s had a completely pliant Republican legislature to enact his warmed over Reaganomics agenda, with the following results:
-Wisconsin drops from 31st to 37th in job growth
-The State budget is bleeding red ink after generous tax cuts for the rich/big business
Baud
@Cacti: What are the chances of the Kansas model not working twice?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
It’s the late stages of the Roman Republic all over again.
Baud
I’ll admit to being curious to see what the Jeb! team does to try to knock Walker down.
Bobby B.
He love you long time! He so hawny!
Elizabelle
You just cannot step on a Thurston thread with a Scott Walker thread.
One of these is intelligent, humane, and has a bright future. The other is governor of Wisconsin.
David Koch
Jeb! has been terrible on the campaign trail, just like Romney. But you can count on him running the same play book where he dumps 50 million in withering negative ads smearing the non-Jebs! back to the stone age.
David Koch
@Baud: Here’s a preview of an ad Jeb! will run.
Baud
@David Koch: I hope they all run something like that against each other.
JPL
@Elizabelle: lol and so true. …
Baud
@efgoldman: Our own Mustang Bobby just got back from a theater festival in Kansas.
? Martin
Hmm. I have a bad feeling that Saudi Arabia and Iran are about to become a thing.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: The Republicans really should go with Brownback for Pres.
BillinGlendaleCA
@? Martin: They’re dating? Who knew.
BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: Don’t laugh, Brownback ran in 2008.
NotMax
Campaign slogans tested and discarded?
“If you liked Warren Harding, you’ll love Scott Walker!”
“His last name is the same as Dubya’s middle one!”
“Ka-chings go better with Koch!”
VidaLoca
@David Koch:
Can’t deny that he’s looked like one in the past weeks. I live in Wisconsin and even I’m amazed at some of the things that have come out of his mouth. However — it’s become somewhat of a fashion (and your DK writer is an example of this trend) to make fun of Walker but you do it at your peril. His campaign field support operation is focused, competent, professional. They don’t leave a lot of loose ends lying around; they make sure their voters get to the polls much more effectively than the Democrats do (admittedly a low bar in Wisconsin, but still).
@Cacti:
And the amazing thing about it is that it didn’t have to be this way — his whole program was not only driven completely by ideology, but it’s put him in the position where his first choice of a way out is to balance the budget by ripping off not just Milwaukee and Madison but the rest of the state as well. Finally people here are getting a little pissed, finally they’re starting to wake up to the fact that they’ve been used.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@BillinGlendaleCA: Yes. Unfortunately, they’re both dating to 680 and the whole relationship is a mess.
Chris
@Baud:
It would be bad enough if they were saying “we will support anyone but we prefer Scott Walker because he’s for gay marriage.” But Scott Walker isn’t even for gay marriage, quite the opposite in fact. They can’t even be arsed to find a candidate who’s pro-gay-marriage – that’s how little of a shit they give.
Chris
@? Martin:
@BillinGlendaleCA:
“Iran; relationship status; it’s complicated with Saudi Arabia.”
David Koch
@BillinGlendaleCA: are you sure, I thought it was Bareback who ran.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris: They are pro-gay rights in the Moe Szyzlak way: I’m more of a well wisher in that I don’t wish you any specific harm
NotMax
So how long until the Koch business puts Walker’s face on the body of the lumberjack on every Brawny wrapper?
(Put this on wrong thread earlier.)
Exurban Mom
Was not he the one who took the prank call from a pretend Koch brother? And he dropped out of college? Really, he’s their choice?
Cervantes
@NotMax:
!
Billy Davis, who wrote that jingle, once said that he drank Pepsi as a kid because Coke was too expensive.
Cervantes
@Exurban Mom:
That’s why he’s their choice.
? Martin
@NotMax: I doubt it. I have it on good authority that guy puts on women’s clothing and hangs around in bars.
catclub
The Koch’s political favorites have generally done poorly in elections, starting with running themselves. I hope that continues.
NotMax
@Exurban Mom
Buyable and pliable are features, not bugs.
OldDave
May PTerry Rest in Peace. I love Discworld.
Exurban Mom
@efgoldman: I give you Ohio, 2004.
Cervantes
@efgoldman:
Worked out pretty well for some people.
catclub
@? Martin: It does not seems to come up much that the Houthis have been the most effective force against AQAP in Yemen. Complicated, indeed. I just read a book on Lawrence in Arabia, which was fascinating. Naturally, it was all optimistic about the Arab spring revolts (a very small comment). It was written in 2011 or 2012. It did express the general fucked uped ness of the region.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: FWIW I think Bush was reasonably intelligent but aggressively incurious. I don’t think Walker is very bright, but he has quite of bit of what used to be called “low cunning.”
Exurban Mom
@NotMax: can we have Buyable and Pliable as a rotating BJ tag? Love it.
Mandalay
@Exurban Mom:
There are many reasons to avoid choosing Walker, but that isn’t one of them.
Sad_Dem
@efgoldman: The presidential election could turn on gay marriage. Not so much that people will see it as the defining civil rights issue of their time (even if it is) but that by now a slim majority favors gay marriage, and the candidate who opposes it will be seen as belonging to the past.
catclub
@Exurban Mom: yes and yes. and apparently, yes.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: I stood in cold drizzle for over two hours to vote in Ohio that year.
Cervantes
@efgoldman:
Fair enough!
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris: and @efgoldman:
No, but I have been hit, here, by people claiming that the Kochs are socially liberal and economically ‘conservative’. This is a giant pile of steaming bullshit. It might make them feel righteous to claim they’re not one of those icky Christianists who go on and on about sex and puritanism, but they created the Tea Party, chose and funded the most nutcase social conservatives over merely plutocratic assholes.
They’re loonier than Canadian money.
Exurban Mom
@Mandalay: I have nothing against anyone who isn’t a college grad. I’m thinking more about pressure points that could be brought to bear on his national campaign. He has also come down hard on cuts to the UW system, so he can be easily painted as anti education.
Peale
@? Martin: I don’t see what you’re seeing. I looks like Saudi bombs fell close to Irans embassy. The Iranian rattling seems to be in response to that, just like China threatened the US with retaliation over its embassy in Yugoslavia.
Redshift
From the article linked above, David Koch describing his near-death experience in a runway plane crash:
That’s what he says he was doing. The guy could not be any more selfish and evil if he wore a top hat and opera cape and twirled his moustache!
Exurban Mom
I also waited in the rain to vote that year, at a horribly undersized and understaffed precinct. And the anti gay marriage constitutional amendment threw Ohio into the Red column. More than 10 years later…the atmosphere does feel different.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay:
Of course, it is. He walked away from college without a degree after more than three years. It wasn’t because he couldn’t afford it. It wasn’t because he had sick family that needed his help. It wasn’t because he he couldn’t do the work. I suspect that is was either because he got caught doing something unsavory or because he was in a hurry to start being a profession Republican asshole.
Peale
@efgoldman: support for gay marriage is not spread evenly. Could it flip Ohio? Maybe. Depends on how big the blowback is.
kideni
One thing to remember about Walker is that he comes from a fairly modest means, and all he’s ever done in his life is politics – he has nothing else to fall back on, so he will be extraordinarily loyal to anyone who wants to buy him.
Omnes Omnibus
@Exurban Mom: I was in German Village in C-bus. Contrariwise, a colleague at work who lived in Powell (wealthy sub/exurb) waltzed in and out in five minutes – fwiw he voted for the good guys.
VidaLoca
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t disagree with “low cunning” but I’ll give him more than that: the man is a consummate, ruthless opportunist. If there is one thing he’s all about, he’s all about the main chance and what will benefit Scott Walker. Look at the current budget fiasco: purely for the sake of polishing his bona fides to better take the next step up the ladder he’s willing to screw up both the public schools and the higher education system in the state too. It will take years to undo the damage he’ll leave behind in furtherance of nothing but his endless ambition.
@Exurban Mom:
He’ll wear that one as a badge of honor and get a lot of respect in some circles for doing so.
Omnes Omnibus
@VidaLoca:
So was GWB.
gf120581
Expect the Kochs to be fickle in their affections. Walker is already fading somewhat in polling (in no small part because he’s no longer the Shiny New Thing and has to compete with others who have actually declared their candidacies) and he’s picking up a rep as an empty-suit bumbler (most recent, his attempt to thread the gay marriage needle by saying he wouldn’t attend an actual gay marriage but he’d definitely hit the reception…especially if there’s an open bar no doubt). If he stumbles and falls, the Kochs will cut him loose and turn their attention to another.
My guess is Rubio. He’s so dreamy to them. In fairness, while Marco is as much a vacuous lightweight as Walker, he does have an advantage in the looks department, as Rubio (a) doesn’t have that constant “derp face” look, (b) doesn’t have a bald spot that looked like someone whacked a nine iron off his noggin and didn’t replace the divet and (c) doesn’t have the dead eyes of a mass murderer.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
“And his first name is the same as Skeletor Voldemort’s last one!”
Mandalay
@Exurban Mom:
Sure he can, and with good reason, but dropping out of college when he was 22 has nothing to do with that. There are plenty of Republican politicans who completed college who are also in favor of education cuts.
GxB
@VidaLoca: Property taxes dropped maybe $50 for my folks, but they observed that is just going to go to the alignment shop because the roads around here resemble Verdun in 1917.
@Exurban Mom: They want a blank slate sock-puppet, and Scoot is that in spades.
VidaLoca
@Omnes Omnibus: But whereas GWB was an entitled, dissolute opportunist, Walker is a highly-focused, hard-working, aggressive opportunist. Walker has bootstrapped his way up from actually rather modest means; Bush was, as they say, born on third but convinced he had hit a triple.
Omnes Omnibus
@VidaLoca: Absolutely, but my original point was just trying to differentiate between the two. I picked one way and you just hit on another.
? Martin
@Peale: The Houthis are backed by Iran, and Iran appears to be sending ships to the region possibly with arms. Because Yemen sits on SAs border, and SA is not particularly keen on Iran, they are taking quite strenuous objection to Iran’s proxy moves. Egypt is also getting involved for the same reason. There are similar complications around Syria/Iraq.
We’re now pulling a carrier out of support for air strikes against ISIS to move it to Yemen to intercept those Iranian ships. My guess is that we’re really there to remind everyone not to get too agitated there on the high seas.
VidaLoca
@GxB: Driving in Milwaukee is like driving on the moon. Now, head west into Waukesha County, there it’s a whole different experience…
VidaLoca
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh yeah — not arguing with you…
gf120581
@VidaLoca: I’m really looking forward to that dynamic in the GOP nomination fight, because that could make things really ugly between Jeb and Scotty. To put it crudly, Jeb probably thinks of Scotty as the guy who mows his lawn.
Omnes Omnibus
@VidaLoca: Nor I with you.
VidaLoca
@gf120581:
He probably does. And Scotty will try to leverage every available ounce of class resentment he can out of that dynamic, and take it to the bank.
GxB
@VidaLoca: Color me shocked, and let me guess on the schools… That guy set us back a century. (I was going to say “a couple generations” but that was actually when this state had its shit together.)
Oh BTW was it you who was going to write up a guest post for on of the front-pagers? If so is it coming along?
Omnes Omnibus
@gf120581:
No, that would be Rubio. Walker is contractor who redid the oyster shell drive.
@GxB:
We can get our shit back together.
@GxB:
I truly admire VidaLoca’s ability to talk about politics in Wisconsin without overusing variants of “fuck” and then giving up to guzzle 3/4 of a bottle of brandy
VidaLoca
@GxB: It was me, and thanks for asking. Rough draft is mostly done but it’s turning into a 2-part article. At this rate with luck I’ll be able to hand it in some time early next week…
GxB
@VidaLoca: Ah, looking forward to it.
Omnes Omnibus
@GxB: As am I.
ETA: @VidaLoca: No pressure or anything, but our expectations are damned high. Just saying.
GxB
@Omnes Omnibus: Our shit gathering ability, I hope, hasn’t faltered, but outside the bubbles of sanity (strangely often near university towns) it is really disheartening to hear the the average Joes and Janes speak. So much misdirected hatred and so quick to defend the jackals with the boot to their necks.
As for your second observation, an excellent point and one of the reasons I mostly keep my mouth shut.
SWMBO
@VidaLoca: So say we all.
VidaLoca
@GxB:
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks to both of you. I hope when I finally get the thing done that it doesn’t disappoint.
Off to bed. Goodnight, all.
catclub
@VidaLoca:
It is interesting that no one was doing that in 2012 to Romney. So I vote it as being less obvious than you suggest.
Too many GOP voters think of themselves as soon to be multi-millionaires, so they take insults to Romney and his ilk personally.
weird, but truthy.
catclub
@kideni:
…until someone with a larger wallet offers to buy him. I don’t think that is actually loyalty.
Omnes Omnibus
@catclub: Walker is coming out of Wisconsin where there is a tradition of blaming pointy headed intellectuals and elites for all the problems. Populism has two faces. A lot of folks around here (Balloon Juice) only notice the pleasant one. Populism can get scary.
Mike in NC
In 2012 the Kochs paid for their preferred VP candidate in the form of homunculus Paul Ryan. In 2016 they’re going for homunculus President Scott Walker, another bland WASP.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike in NC: Walker is not a WASP in the classic sense. GWB was.
Frankensteinbeck
@catclub:
I don’t think it’s because they think they’re about to be rich. It’s an enemy-of-my-enemy thing. Blacks are poor. Liberals help blacks. Liberals want to restrict the ability of rich people to stomp on the poor. GOP voters have a strong streak of being mean shits who like to see someone stomped on anyway. So basically, they will defend rich people to the death from the REAL enemy, blacks and the liberals who enable them.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus: Walker is kind of hodgepodge of celtic and middle European ethnic, with some English. Kind of ancestry that would incline people like Jefferson and Madison to omit the ‘Mr.’ and refer to simply as ‘Walker’ if they had an excuse to do so.
So, not a real WASP, for whatever that is worth. Nouveau blanc? Though I think that is some kind of wine…probably too classy to call him that. And he doesn’t drink.
There I go committing cultural micro-genocide against whites again. Darn it! Sorry.
jl
@Frankensteinbeck: Among the teabaggers in my family, and their teabagger associates, there is also an element of hapless failed dreamer, who thinks the next doogus ill-planned stunt, or half-baked plan will pan out. Their ship WILL come in some day, if they just try to cruise through some sketchy private vocational course, sink some money into a unplanned and poorly executed business plan, or trust that nice white Christian man with a deal that is too damn good to turn down.
So, they always lose their money and have nothing to show for it. But next time! You just watch.
In their heads, an attack on the rich is the big government getting ready to take away their future fortune. It sounds crazy and is crazy. But they are crazy, so there you go. I think it kind of makes sense from their point of view, though not from reality’s.
J R in WV
@VidaLoca:
Hey, good luck!
Don’t forget, you CAN use the good Old Anglish word FUCK all you need to!!!
Sometimes it is the most appropriate descriptor possible… And there are other Old Anglish words you can use, don’t forget that.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: Like I said above, Jeb would probably see him as someone like him as someone like the contractor who redid the drive.
Sadly, my family is on the fringes of proper WASPdom,so I tend to be strict about applying it. Walkers dad was a Baptist minister; that pretty much excludes him from WASPdom.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
This is something libertarians as a whole get credit for, and it drives me insane. On the issue of gay rights that the “socially liberal” side has turned into a winning issue over the last decade, libertarians didn’t do a thing – they left all the work to the hated hippies, Democrats and other assorted left-wing activists. They’re “socially liberal” in the sense that like Wall Street, gay marriage isn’t the hill they want to die on, but they won’t lift one fucking finger to help the “socially liberal” side take the hill. All the heavy lifting will still have to be done by left wingers.
(Of course part of the reason for this is probably that, as Krugman pointed out on his blog the other week, “libertarians” don’t actually exist).
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV:
OTOH, “Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck….., ” while accurate, is not informative.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris: Folks like the Alcotts described themselves as socially radical and fiscally conservative. Today, people misinterpret this. They were in favor of government programs and things that improved equality. At the same time, they were careful with their own money. That is all.
jl
@Frankensteinbeck: In fact, now that I think about it, a lot of the farmer and other rural teabaggers I know, think that they already would be rich, or at least much better off than they are now, if it were not for that damn government thwarting them at every turn. So they are bitter about that.
So, sure, there was that time the laid out a lot of bucks for that mail order course that never arrived or turned out to be pamphlet they could read at the library, or dropped out the vocational school when they realized they did not already know it all and just paid to get the certificate with no extra work.
And then there was the time they gave 20 grand in cash up front to that nice white Christian man contractor, who disappeared.
And sure, there was that business that went belly up because they couldn’t get labor at a decent price and kept hiring meth heads. (Edit: because no one worth a damn needed to work because of government welfare)
But, there were all those other times, that damn government just shut down their sure fire schemes! Because the government wanted them to fail. FAIL! Think about that!
shortstop
@GxB: I think sometimes about how hard it must be for those of you in blue pockets to watch the regression of your state. After all, Illinois is red outside of Chicago, our university towns, parts of Rockford and some union strongholds downstate — so there but for the grace of dog, aka the sheer size of Chicago, go we. (Maybe not quite, though — a full-on tea partier like Johnson has never been elected to statewide office here, or even had a serious chance. We elect straight-on establishmentarian douches like Rauner.)
It’s with a certain amount of frustration that I think about how much time — really quite a bit — I’ve spent in WI, mostly Milwaukee, getting out the vote the past few years. Meanwhile, the not-insubstantial number of family and friends I have in Madison seem to believe that chatting to like-minded others over craft beers, on political blogs and on Sunday kayaking expeditions constitutes substantive political activism. Yeah, a few of them did hit the Capitol for an hour or two to show us what democracy looks like, but overall I’ve been astounded by the lack of effort they put forth to make sure everyone likely to vote Democratic gets to the polls.
This is my own anecdotal evidence, of course — for all I know, Dane County is bursting with lefties who put their cash in the vicinity of their yaps, and I just don’t know any of them online or off. And as I said above, Chicago’s big enough that we never have to be tested on how hard we’d have to work to GOTV if Illinois were as closely divided as Wisconsin is. Certainly we saw in November what happens when part of Chicago doesn’t come out to vote! All the same, I think I’m done giving my time and effort to WI until I can see progressives there putting more skin in the game.
NotMax
Just noticed that Three is running on TCM right now. Uneven film, but does have one scene nude scene with a young Sam Waterson.
Mike J
Wha?
Peale
@Mike J: it’s too late at night for this. That doesnt make sense. So I would get off Scott free if the judge thought the charges were too light?
srv
@? Martin:
Obama knows who his master is:
Out the window, your nukular deal, is.
Who knew Fivers were Twelver biotches? Remember when Uncle Ho got all his orders from Red Square?
Mandalay
@Mike J: That’s a doozy. The complete ruling is here (at the bottom of the page).
I think it would take a lawyer to make sense that decision. It’s certainly not trivial for a layman to follow the argument being made.
The cop who got off seemed hellbent on pouring gasoline on the fire:
He’ll need to be watching his back for the rest of his life.
Mike J
@Mandalay: He also said:
Here’s what happened:
Five shots over his shoulder sounds plenty reckless. Shooting at a person who is holding a phone sounds reckless. Missing the unarmed person you were trying to kill and hitting a bystander sounds reckless.
Mandalay
Cops seem to be addicted to murdering black people:
The murdered man’s spine was “80 percent severed at his neck”, but the cops have absolutely no idea how it happened? We are so fucked.
Mandalay
@Mike J:
For using his cell phone? Words fail me. We are so, so fucked.
JustRuss
Is anyone else seeing an ad for CNN’s Parts Unknown? I ask because I rarely watch TV, but I happened to catch the show a few nights ago at my mom’s place. Some of her utilities are in my name, but not cable. Just wondering how paranoid I should be.
gene108
From the Biz Journal article at the top.
Maybe it is true that the good die young.
This piece of shit, Scalia, Cheney, Kissinger, etc. are still kicking…
BillinGlendaleCA
@gene108: I remember that crash.
gene108
@efgoldman:
The vote to ban gay marriage in the North Carolina constitution passed by overwhelming margins in 2012.
If you look at the map about how the vote was distributed, the college towns – RTP, Boone, Wilmington, etc. – were in favor of gay marriage, while the rest of the state voted something like 80% to ban it.
There’s a lot of resentment on the Right that gay marriage bans are being overturned by the court. I’m sure this is a font of anger that can be tapped into for 2016 and milked a bit longer.
NotMax
@ says:
Then again, if the Supreme Court formalizes same-sex marriage at the end of June, that provides well over a year prior to the election for people to see that the Sun still rises in the east and sets in the west and take note of the lack of rains of frogs and locusts.
Yes, there will still be a faction which is on the wrong side of history, but the longer the new normal is in place, the more their numbers will shrink.
NotMax
#110: @gene108
? Martin
@gene108: Thank goodness he ignored that federal regulation to keep his seat belt on until the plane reached the gate. Nothing a few billion dollars can’t solve…
gene108
@? Martin:
The whole Biz Journal article was fluffing the right-wing billionaires about all their charitable giving.
After Dave Koch got in the plane crash, he was diagnosed with cancer. He gave $100 million to MIT (his alma matter) for cancer research, and another $100 million for the New York theatre and opera.
Ken Langone, founder of Home Depot, gave $100 million dollars to NYU’s medical school and they named it after him: The Langone School of Medicine.
What the article leaves out is the charity seems to be the rich giving money to the already reasonably well off and not so much to do stuff like help the homeless or how so much charity would not be needed, if we had better government resources handy.
Tommy
@shortstop: Just so you know I am down state here in Illinois. About six hours from Chicago in a car. As blue of a district as you will find. Now I will admit we elected a Republican to our House seat. But that was the first time in 70 years we did that. We are pretty much all blue here!
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: I’ve been assured that a decade is not nearly long enough to wait to see whether gay marriage destroys society in Massachusetts.
opiejeanne
@Mandalay: Did you see the video of him being dragged to the police van? He didn’t look like he was resisting, he looked like his body was limp from the neck down.
opiejeanne
@Mike J: that was the trial that they talked about on the news this evening, that had just ended?
That judge needs to be removed from office.
Cervantes
@Matt McIrvin:
Trick question.
It’s always been dog-eat-dog in Massachusetts.
Cervantes
@gene108:
More than twice that to MIT generally, and more than four times that towards cancer research generally, the overlap being roughly $200 million.
raven
Oh man, Halperin and Joe have the goods on the Clintons, may as well hang it up!
eta It is so cute when Joe imitates the big dog.
NotMax
@raven
Oh no! How many paper clips did she pilfer from the State Dept.?
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Well Ho did figure out why Hillz erased all those emails. Genius!
raven
@NotMax: It’s “death by a thousand cuts” according to whoever the brother they have on this morning.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: All this motherfucker babbles on about is that we need to be tougher with Iran then he scoffs at the ships being sent.
BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: Bill was getting paid for speeches(like no other President, cough Reagan), and Hillz did favors for them. IT’S ALL IN THOSE ERASED EMAILS! Wake up sheeple!
sparrow
Thank god for death, the great equalizer.
For now.
BillinGlendaleCA
I can’t make any comments, I’m being OPRESSED!
sparrow
@gene108: Of course they’re not going to say those things, that would be questioning the Established Order and How Things Are.
I’m reminded of a CNN broadcast years ago when Walker was booting the unions, and the entire segment framed the debate as “(a) unions must die or (b) state will go bankrupt”… aka, “you are an idiot if you pick b, what kind of person are you? All serious people accept a. But we here at CNN report on the controversy and let you know about idiotic opinion b, oh yes!”
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: I just saw someone on Facebook complaining that she stole all the china from the White House. The classics never die.
Baud
@raven:
She’d be 50 points ahead if it weren’t for all these scandels!
Alex S.
@gf120581:
I knew Walker always was guy #1 for the Kochs and I thought that the financial support they gave to Rubio was primarily to hurt Jeb (nobody else gets hurt by Marco Rubio), so that they can enforce a Walker-Bush ticket instead of Bush-Walker. But you’re probably right, Rubio is also being used as a secondary option if Walker implodes.
Iowa Old Lady
It’ll be interesting to see how far Koch money takes Walker. Can you buy an election in 21st century America?
sparrow
@Iowa Old Lady: Didn’t Romney already prove no?
OldDave
@gene108:
What a fucking shame that you didn’t, Mr. Koch.
Iowa Old Lady
@sparrow: That was my hope.
Tommy
@NotMax: LOL. I am not a huge fan of Hillary, but the women has done a lot of stuff. Early on she was working on the House Committee. First lady for eight years. Senator. Sec of State. Last I checked that is a pretty good resume.
Frankensteinbeck
@jl:
You do have a big point. One glance at Glen Beck’s sponsors tells you that conservatives are the target market for get-rich-quick schemes, and Sovereign Citizens are conservatives as well.
Bobby Thomson
@Exurban Mom: his dropping out of college is a rake for his opponents to step on. Plays right into anti-elitism.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mandalay: beyond he is following in the footstep of Paulin – someone looking for the easy way and they want to be president, which is likely one of the hardest jobs in the country.
Tommy
@Bobby Thomson: I will not put down somebody that doesn’t go to college. I don’t think I am better I went to college. I have a MA, my dad and grandfather PhDs. If for no other reason it taught me to do something for an extended period of time. Finish something I started. He didn’t do that.
rikyrah
folks on the blogs had it nailed long ago that Walker was the Koch candidate.
rikyrah
@Mandalay:
Actually, it is.
It astonishes me, but not really, the excuses being made for this.
Why shouldn’t the American people have standards.
And, yes, let’s bring this back to Black and White.
Would a Black candidate, who was a COLLEGE DROPOUT be taken seriously?
OF.COURSE.NOT.