The first GOP debate question should be, "Show of hands, who is really running for Vice President?" Then they fall through trap doors.
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) May 19, 2015
Ed Kilgore, at the Washington Monthly:
With Rick Snyder and John Bolton backing away from presidential candidacies, I guess there’s now a sense of more elbow room. So today we learn that Lindsey Graham will announce for president on June 1; Bobby Jindal’s setting up an exploratory committee and announcing when the Louisiana legislative session—a source of little other than pain for Jindal—ends on June 11; and John Kasich has decided to run and will announce in late June or July.
We’re really getting to the point where the only proto-candidates who might still pull up short of the starting gate are those nobody takes seriously anyway, like George Pataki and possibly The Donald. I mean, yeah, Chris Christie ought to take a pass, too, but I don’t know if his ego will allow it. Carly Fiorina has exactly zero chance of winning the nomination, but the whole party wants her to run so she’d be nuts not to exploit months and months of rapturous conservative media attention she can bank for whatever else she wants to do…
Jeb Lund, at the Guardian:
If you are over 35 and a Republican, you are allowed one (1) free presidential campaign announcement. It’s like the coupon for a free waxpaper cup of Pepsi at a church picnic: you just get one for showing up. These are the rules, which is why, in the next few weeks, everyone else in the Republican Party will launch their campaign to not become president of the United States, because it is their right…
If you at any point in your life took a civics course, you are probably tempted to say that these are serious people who see the challenges facing America and are committed to making a positive difference for everyone… Unfortunately, here is an updated, realistic list of reasons why these remaindered-bin people from the Republican Party are running for president:
* They’re auditioning for a seven-figure commentator’s contract at Fox News.
* They’re going through an elaborate, performative book tour for a ghost-written paperweight they spent all of three hours dictating vague material for, to be sold at $24.99 a pop.
* They’re auditioning for a senior cabinet position.
* They’re driving up their speaker’s fee for corporate conferences.
* They’re raising a giant war chest for some other future project.
* They’re trying to drive the presidential election discussion further toward the fringe.Those last two probably apply to Lindsey Graham, the senior senator from South Carolina… He doesn’t have a chance at the nomination… Instead, he’s doing what he always does, drive American bellicosity further right into blood-streaming-down-the-walls crazy. Sunday morning, for instance, Graham said that if you’re even “thinking about joining al-Qaida or Isil, I’m not gonna call a judge. I’m gonna call a drone and we’re gonna kill you.” Graham has always been someone who gives you the impression that the name he asks the barista to put on his cup at Starbucks is just a unilateral statement of American military aggression, but this most recent pronouncement was an insane first for him: we reserve the right to murder you for your thoughts…
Bobby Jindal is running. Bobby Jindal is also polling worse in the (very) red state of which he is governor than Barack Obama… Bobby is probably angling very hard for a six-figure consultant salary from a think tank named The Values Liberty Tradition Foundation for America, USA.
Chris Christie and Rick Perry would both like that job, if only because it will offset the legal fees they will incur from their current jobs as man-whose-political-career-is-over-because-he-testifies-in-court-for-a-living. Perry will go further in the primary season because Christie is walking around in a sad tornado of potential indictments, like Pig Pen from Peanuts surrounded by clouds of blue paper left by process servers… Perry, however, is such an affable-seeming twit that it would surprise nobody if he got tricked into signing over the deed to his house to a wisecracking cartoon rabbit. In fact, he’s so thoroughly dumb that the national press actually discussed his wearing glasses as a sign of seriousness. If he’d worn a pocket protector, Joe Scarborough might have argued that we should have Perry build America “a cooler space shuttle.”…
Aaaand the hits just keep on coming…
Marco Rubio cleaned up in the trifecta of dumb, corrupt, and losery this week. http://t.co/4T0y8zoYGY
— Gawker (@Gawker) May 18, 2015
NPR really worked hard to make Lindsey Graham sound like a decent candidate right up until he promised to kill Americans for thought crimes.
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) May 18, 2015
Rick Santorum literally has an anus in his 2016 campaign logo https://t.co/7azHBr4blo
— Rusty Foster (@rustyk5) May 18, 2015
candidates for president probably shouldn't pledge to fuck up the country beyond repair pic.twitter.com/UstHxGQU1K
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) May 17, 2015
also consider the overlap between Graham's promise to murder Americans suspected of terror ties and this Rubio slogan pic.twitter.com/mWzi8f3Y7i
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) May 18, 2015
Amir Khalid
Alas: the party of Abraham Lincoln has become, in its presidential candidates at least, the party of Rufus T. Firefly.
Betty Cracker
I’m watching “Starship Troopers” on Netflix. Never seen it before, somehow. Pretty amusing.
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
Does the film strike you as a satire of fascism, or as a celebration of it? I’m aware that Heinlein had libertarian/right-wing inclinations.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Or Emmett Kelly.
burnspbesq
Between the war-mongering and the slashing of the social safety net, is there any other logical explanation than “Republicans like to watch people suffer and die?”
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: Seems like satire to me.
burnspbesq
So, Amir: (1) how much can Liverpool reasonably expect to get for Sterling and (2) how should they spend it?
NotMax
@burnspbesq
They are to the social safety net what Gallagher is to watermelons.
burnspbesq
@NotMax:
Or as Bill Belichik is to the NFL rule-book.
burnspbesq
Dear Senator Warren,
Ben Bernanke is both smarter than you and possessed of actual first-hand experience at keeping our economy from going over the cliff. When he tells you that you’re full of crap, you should pay attention.
Very truly yours,
A Citizen
P.S. what in Heaven’s name are you doing palling around with David Vitter?
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/ben-bernanke/posts/2015/05/15-warren-vitter-proposal
Amir Khalid
@burnspbesq:
Somewhere north of 50 million euros. At least two competent strikers.
mai naem
The 2016 GOP primary is actually a great illustration of GOP philosophy in action. It’s all about selfishness. Forget about the collective good of the GOP. It’s all about me me me. The party looks absolutely moronic and people are going to be turned off from voting for the GOP in the general as a result of the antics that will go on during the primary.
Also too, I happened to be listening to some liberal show last week where Reagan was being blamed for our current economic problems. This weekend on NPR, they had the 538 writer who mentioned that the average age of an amtrak cab in 2001 was 18 years. Now, its 28 years. It seems to me that Republicans are like slumlords. They don’t want to maintain “their” properties and are happy to be milking every last dime from them and not put a dime into them even if the roof is leaking badly and electrical wires are getting eaten up by rats and the place won’t be livable soon,.
NotMax
@burnspbesq
Having less than scant knowledge of and zero interest in sports, have no idea to what that refers, but shall take your word for it.,
Viva BrisVegas
@Amir Khalid:
The film is definitely satire. Paul Verhoeven was the director of Soldier of Orange (a fine film), he is very aware of the dangers and lure of fascism. His Troopers was a critique of the fascist elements in Heinlein’s book, not a celebration. Just look at the uniforms.
Asimov said that Heinlein himself was a standard Roosevelt Democrat, until he came under the influence of his last wife. Rather similarly to a former President.
David Koch
@burnspbesq: Elizabeth Warren is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.
Origuy
Thread needs eight Shelties doing a Scottish country dance with their handlers.
danielx
@burnspbesq:
You speak more truly than you know. Sometime back in the oughts I was at a bar with three friends, one Democrat and two Republicans, the latter two what you might call reasonable Republicans as these things go – came of age in the Reagan era, etc. At one point in the discussion I asked if the current Republican Party had any philosophy other than cutting taxes and bombing people, and they – both smart guys – had no answer.
They still don’t, except that paying an inordinate amount of attention to women’s ladyparts has been added to the two previous points.
Anne Laurie
@Origuy: Oh, that’s fantastic! — especially the little red-headed ringer, who I suspect is actually a Cavalier (Spaniel)… totally appropriate for a batch of Scottish romantics…
Mustang Bobby
So let me see if I have this right: President Obama issues executive orders and the Republicans claim that he’s lawless, overriding the will of Congress, stomping on the Constitution, and should be impeached. Gov. Jindal issues an executive order enabling anti-gay discrimination and he’s upholding freedom and doing the work that the legislature refuses to do.
I hope he runs for president, I really do. It will be the acme of karma to see him get his head handed to him in the first primary and then wait for him to show up on late night TV hawking reverse mortgages.
Matt McIrvin
@Amir Khalid: Verhoeven’s film is a really, really hamfisted parody of the attitude underlying Heinlein’s book. I find it too unsubtle to be really amusing (Robocop hit the sweet spot better), but it’s a long time since I’ve seen it.
satby
Had to share that Guardian article up top on the Mombook. Mostly because it’s such a great way to tweak my conservative”friends”.
debbie
@NotMax:
No. Emmett had a heart.
jonas
@Matt McIrvin:
Lol. The secret police are dressed exactly like Nazi SS officers. It’s subtle.
Bobby Thomson
@burnspbesq: He has a lot more experience in causing said economy to go over the cliff, too. Should we also listen to Dick Cheney’s views on foreign policy because of his experience in fucking it up?
Tom
@Betty Cracker: If you get a chance to listen to Paul Verhoeven’s commentary track, do so. He explains that parts of this movie come from his own childhood growing up in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands.
So, yes, it’s an anti-fascist movie.
rp
@Matt McIrvin: Except that when it came out most viewers didn’t get the humor at all. They thought it was a straight up action movie that was loyal to the book’s POV.
Bubblegum Tate
@Betty Cracker:
Outstanding flick. Such gleefully over-the-top satire. I’ll watch it pretty much whenever it’s on.
VOR
@rp: The book “Starship Troopers” was famous for being one of the first, if not the first, description of powered armor. Think Iron Man, but every soldier wearing such a suit. Then the movie drops the powered armor. It was a let down.
Kay
Ruth Marcus demands Congress rubber-stamp the trade deal!
You know, everything anyone asks for in this totally awesome deal is announced to be a “poison pill” that will kill it.
What is the point of having a “debate” on Obama’s trade deal if every modification is immediately and preemptively pronounced “impossible!”?
We get it. We’re getting this trade deal and they don’t want to hear any backtalk. Let’s just skip the fake debate and get right to the rubber stamp.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-phony-argument/2015/05/19/85c3a026-fe4c-11e4-805c-c3f407e5a9e9_story.html
NotMax
@VOR
That reminded me of the wonderfully contrived internet spoof pages about Boilerplate.
LWA (Liberal With Attitude)
@Kay:
“Its un-possible!”
Is the standard never fail perpetual rejoinder to any suggestion to any trade agreement which may possible empower workers, protect the environment or otherwise inconvenience the 0.1%.
For example, in order to strengthen the power of property holders, no provision is considered too draconian or intrusive- a local city in a foreign nation won’t give you a building permit? Fuck, you can sue their ass into oblivion, sovereignty schmoveriegnty.
Oh, you want to insert a provision for a global agreement on minimum wage and worker safety?
“UN-POSSIBLE!!”
lol
@Matt McIrvin:
If the internet has taught me anything, there’s no such thing as “too subtle”.
SWMBO
I am sad that we won’t have the Porn Mustache of Doom in the debates.
Tree With Water
I used to mock Ronald Reagan way back when, too, but there’s no denying he had the last laugh. Which is why, when I heard a democratic POTUS’s claim “the era of small government is over”, or that the Gipper (after Lincoln) remains his beau ideal of an effective president (big, fat wet kisses from Obama), well, it pisses me off. It also goes a long way in explaining why the country went off the rails in the first place.