Looks like Wednesday’s Republican debate in Simi Valley effectively ended Scott Walker’s campaign:
Five other candidates received less than one-half of 1 percentage point support: former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former New York Gov. George Pataki and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
I’m not that surprised, as I thought Walker came across as dumb, tired, and pre-packaged (that clunker of a joke about “The Apprentice” was badly rehearsed).
Walker’s always been the one who frightened me most as a potential president, so this is good news.
Villago Delenda Est
Mainly because it’s all too obvious that he’s nothing but a sock puppet for David and Charles Koch.
MattF
@Villago Delenda Est: Also, Walker was quite successful in pushing a rw agenda in Wisconsin. So, this is good news.
buckyblue
Walker is the ever loyal soldier who isn’t smart enough to figure out how depraved and awful his policies are. He would be a great commandant in a concentration camp. But then again, he’s an awful administrator, so, he may have more in common with Colonel Klink than anythinig.
Splitting Image
Walker’s main advantage as a candidate has always been the idea that he was the Kochs’ boy and that they would provide him with enough money to see him through the primaries regardless of what happened. Now that rumours are starting to circulate about him running out of money, that doesn’t appear to be true anymore. Therefore, he seems much less dangerous as a candidate.
I’m not clear on why Republicans are supposed to be less frightened of Carly Fiorina leading the polls than Donald Trump at the top. Fiorina’s failings can be summed up in a lot fewer words than Trump’s.
The Gray Adder
@MattF: Of course, turning Wisconsin into Alabama isn’t really something to be proud of, as astounding a feat as it is.
Scotius
I bet $60 on predictit.com that he would be the nominee. I had no idea just what a shitty campaigner he was. I thought he was a W type, not particularly bright, but good at doing what his campaign advisers said and winning elections. Something has to be seriously wrong in Wisconsin if this grub got re-elected.
Debbie
I think this shows that having more money than anyone else doesn’t guarantee victory. It didn’t work for Mitt either.
Yatsuno
@Splitting Image: The Kochs have the same direct donation limits as any other private citizen does. What they should have done is arrange bundling for him through their own donor networks and employment structures so he can get a needed boost of funds. But they want to stay quiet about all this so they can control the strings without being seen. Watch the lines get REALLY blurry between what super PACs do in regards to direct and indirect support this election cycle. It will have the FEC in fits.
Villago Delenda Est
@Splitting Image:
Two words: Hewlett Packard
Villago Delenda Est
@Yatsuno: The FEC has been starved for resources precisely to enable these sort of shenanigans to slip beneath the radar.
gf120581
I never was afraid of Walker. He’s a classic example of a successful state politician who fizzles when he goes national, in no small part because he doesn’t hold up under the glare of the national spotlight. The WI press has largely treated him with kid gloves. The national press has not and he doesn’t know how to handle it.
Don’t overlook how untelegenic he is, either. Besides his lack of charisma and his inability to think on his feet and bullshit well, he is an ugly sight to behold. Pale, corpse-like skin; a perpetual “duh” expression on his face; a massive bald spot that looks like someone whack a nine iron off his head and forget to replace the divot; and, of course, those dead eyes of his. As I’m fond of saying, those eyes don’t say “president,” they say “I have a body dump in my basement and the cast of “Criminal Minds” is raiding it as we speak.”
Right to Rise
So Jeb’s biggest competitor is toast. With Christie already imploded, Jeb is the establishment choice with not a threat in site.
Great news for the campaign once the “big boy” primaries start in places like California, New York, etc. Instead of splitting the establishment vote six different ways by February all the big donors and GOP politicos will be squarely behind Jeb.
PaulW
it’s interesting how a lot of the candidates who pose well as leaders and strong politicians at the state level flounder so badly once they go national and into environments they can’t fully control.
For Jeb it’s the fact he doesn’t have the easy factor of having a state-wide GOP apparatus getting out the vote for ANY Republican candidate for governor. When he faced a legit leader in Lawton Chiles he struggled, lost every head-to-head debate, and failed to win in 1994 (if he had won, HE would have been the 2000 Presidential nominee and not Dubya). Jeb only won in 1998 (and 2002) because by then even a dead dog could have won for the Republicans those years. We’re talking about a state of Florida where the party f-cking put a MEDICARE FRAUD CEO like Rick “No Ethics” Scott into the governorship, especially for re-election when I swear there were more Scott haters than backers in nearly every county.
You can say the same about every other governor on the ballot: Christie (whose own sins are catching up to him), Jindal (who’s lost his state already), Walker. Kasich is the only one who still has some popular support back home, and even HE’S unable to translate that support into any noticeable gains with the base voters.
This says more about the state-level organization of the Republicans – and the failures of the Democrats to be as effective at that level – than the actual quality of the candidates.
Half of the reason Trump and Carson and even Fiorina are doing so well: the actual elected guys are turning out to be just as inexperienced and as bad at governance as the amateurs.
Right to Rise
@Debbie:
Who won the nomination in 2012?
Who?
That’s right: Mitt.
It’s all about the Benjamins, baby…
Schlemazel
@The Gray Adder:
Having lived through Kochwhore v1.0 here in Minnesota I can attest that the people of Wisconsin have a huge mess to clean up. I suppose the brothers have some gain in the destruction of two once healthy States but you do have to wonder how long they will piss money away on deadly dull morons
Doug!
@Right to Rise:
I think Rubio might be the favorite now.
Right to Rise
Fiorna is a legit VP contender for Jeb and that’s about it. She doesn’t have the experience necessary to be at the top of the ticket–she needs to be an understudy to Jeb.
Anoniminous
Both the WaPo and Grey Lady had “GOP in Disarray” articles last week. ‘twould be nice if the rest of the Infotainment Mediums picked it up and ran with it.
Right to Rise
@Doug!:
Rubio looks like he just graduated high school. Too youthful, no gravitas or maturity.
Joel
I will agree with RtR that Fiorina’s rise and Walker’s collapse bodes fairly well for Jeb, in the primaries at least.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Meh.
If it’s a Republican debate, why did the survey include 562 non Republicans+leaners? Could they not find enough Teabaggers willing to cite an opinion? Iowa and NH have sorta-closed primaries/caucuses.
While recognizing that the +/- 4.5% MOE doesn’t mean 0% is the same as 9%, the tiny sample size means that basically there’s very little confidence of the rankings between Jeb?’s result (around 40 GOP votes) and Walker’s (around 4 GOP votes) when extrapolated to a larger population.
As long as the Koch brothers continue to back him (and why wouldn’t they – they want to keep their Wisconsin win), he has a crucial advantage over everyone else in the bottom 10% – except maybe Jeb? (depending on whether his fundraising is holding up).
Nobody has voted yet. It’s still very early…
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Schlemazel
@Right to Rise:
One might even say “unlimited corporate cash”. That sure made the difference for President Rmoney
David Koch
NBC Poll Sept 16-18
Trump………………..29
Carson……………….14
Fiorina………………..11
¡Jeb!……………………8◄
Rubio…………………..7
Cruz……………………7
I just love seeing the establishment panic as ¡Jeb! flounders and as Trump exposes all their racism in broad daylight.
MattF
@PaulW: Yeah, it’s the in-real-life version of the ‘deep bench’ narrative. Daylight can be cruel.
Right to Rise
@Schlemazel:
Romney wins without Sandy and Christie’s embrace of Obama.
That plus unusual turnout from elderly black women made the difference, if you look at the data.
You won’t get either event with Hillary. Most likely no storm t the end of the campaign, and even if there is, Hillary doesn’t get to look presidential because she doesn’t hold office. And with a boring white lady on the ticket, you’re not going to get the Af-Am turnout boost you got with Obama last two times ’round. That alone probably means you lose Virginia and Florida.
Gindy51
It’s the bald spot picture that really did him in. No way you can erase that semi covered dumb assed dome once you have seen it shine.
PIGL
@The Gray Adder: considering his considerable and repeated electoral success it is safe to say that the difference between Wisconsin and Alabama wasn’t that great all along.
Steeplejack
Kasich is the one that worries me. My bellwether is my brother, a middle-aged doctor and investor who, if he wasn’t gay, might have turned out to be one of those “money/business wing” Republicans. He thinks Obama is probably the best president of the last 50 years, but he is very unenthusiastic about Hillary Clinton, and I did a spit-take last week when he said, “What about Kasich? He seems fairly reasonable.” So I have gone into deep oppo-research on Kasich to make the distinction that he just looks reasonable compared with the rest of the GOP bench.
My point is that there might be some contingent of Hillary-averse Obama voters who might not see Kasich as the apocalyptic threat that the other clowns are.
I think I can pull my brother through, because he has stated several times that the biggest criterion for the ’16 election is who will get to pick one or several Supreme Court justices.
ETA: This assumes the money wing nukes Trump and Jeb! fails to fly.
Right to Rise
Come to think of it, the Party of Racial and Gender Grievance will probably never again nominate a white male. The only way they can win is ginning up hatred against working-class white men.
Villago Delenda Est
@Right to Rise: This explains why there is no Republican primary contest to speak of right now, as no one dares to challenge President Rmoney.
PurpleGirl
@Splitting Image: I’m starting to think that Fiorina’s experience at Lucent and HP will be attractive to the Republican base. They claim to want to shrink the federal government and reduce its size. Her corporate history could be spun as she has the guts to fire tens of thousands of federal workers.
Right to Rise
@Villago Delenda Est:
Romney lost because of (1) Sandy and (2) elderly black women showed up in unusually large numbers to the polls.
Hillary ain’t gonna have either of those things going for her.
She’s already lost Virginia and Florida because of that. They’re going red right off the bat. That means the battleground gets moved back into the Great Lakes states (Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, maybe even Michigan in play).
trollhattan
@Right to Rise:
I’ll have what he’s drinking.
TheMightyTrowel
Guys! Guys! @Right to Rise has figured out our SEKRIT plan to launch a matriarchy and water it with the blood of white menz! Oh Noes!
gf120581
@Right to Rise: Ah, glad to see the pitiful JEB! troll is making his customary appearance. And peddling the “Obama only won because of Katrina and that damn Christie” lie.
At least JEB! is still somewhat viable. If you were shilling for Walker, it would just be pitiful.
Debbie
@Right to Rise:
And did all those Benjamins get him a room in the White House? Nope, they did not.
David Koch
@Steeplejack: just let him know how Kasich was a managing director of Lehman Bros, the guys who went bankrupt and took down the economy and the stock market.
PurpleGirl
@Villago Delenda Est: See my comment #31. I’m thinking the Republican base will think HP shows she can fire tens of thousands of workers and reduce the size of the federal government. She’ll finally implement “drown the government”.
shell
Its all the Media’s fault!
Expect Right to Rise to surge in here and claim this is great news for Jeb!
Oops, looks like he alreadydid.
gf120581
@Right to Rise: Elderly black women? That’s a new one.
Wow, you are a sad, sad little troll.
@Steeplejack: Kasich is certainly a intriguing dark horse to keep an eye on. If JEB! keeps faltering, I wouldn’t be shocked to see the GOP establishment go to him, if only because they don’t really have many other options (Christie is too wounded and Rubio’s too callow).
Problem is, he’s got problems of his own (especially that erratic temper of his), had a major recent stumble of his own concerning Hispanics (his “tip the maids” comment) and many of the billionaire class don’t like him because he apparently told them to take their criticism of his acceptance of Medicaire expansion in OH and shove it…to their faces.
Villago Delenda Est
@Right to Rise: Yes, Rmoney lost because Obama competently handled the Sandy thing.
Oh, dear. Obama demonstrated that if you have a competent person in charge, government CAN do things for people! My stars and garters, we have to DO something about that fuckin’ ni*CLANG*.
Anya
I read about this many times but I still don’t understand how the people of Wisconsin elected Walker, voted for him in a recall, then re-elected him to a second term?
Marc
@Steeplejack: 2 percent in the polls. He’s not going anywhere.
gelfling545
@Right to Rise: Marvelous. So this is all some passive-aggressive ploy on your part to pull Jeb? through to the nomination & watch him lose the election? Weird but go for it by all means, if it amuses you.
MattF
@PurpleGirl: I think her dishonesty is a big plus– the RNC gets starbursts over it.
ruemara
You and Kay suffer from the same problem. Belief in the bullshit state Govs who held off the disorganized local dems. These guys were never all that.
dedc79
@Right to Rise: You could make the switch from Right to Rise to Remember the Rubble and keep the same abbreviation!
AxelFoley
I’ve never understood this fear from people on the left. Walker was a big fish in a small pond in WI. He barely survived a recall and re-election. When put on the national stage, he was gonna be exposed for the scrub he is.
Wag
@PurpleGirl:
Just like she drowned HP. HP was too big and successful anyway.
Carly “Harrison Bergeron” Fiorino for president. She won’t let any successful company or country go unpunished.
Anoniminous
Comrade RtR:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Doug!: nothing will shake my conviction that he’s stupid (the hearings on ISIS when he accused Obama of going soft to appease Iran should have been the end of his “smart young reform icon” image, but the Beltway needs someone to fill that prewritten role, just like Jeb? is the “northeastern moderate” unicorn”), but he’s been smart enough to lay low wrt to Trump, and he seems to have moved in to double digits (Marco-mentum!) in the post-debate polls with the three front runners (none of whom stand a fucking chance)
@gf120581: I also think Kasich could be a sleeper whose biggest obstacle is his own mouth.
debbie
@David Koch:
Don’t forget Kasich simultaneously promotes his employment at Lehman as proof of his business acumen, even as he insists he was just one man in a two-man office that had nothing to do with the company shenanigans.
Geoduck
@gf120581: Charles Pierce calls him the “goggle-eyed homunculus”.
Davis X. Machina
@Anoniminous: All power to the soviets of hedge-fund managers and jackleg preachers!
Citizen Alan
Reading the quoted passage, my immediate reaction was “Who the f*** is Jim Gilmore?!?”
Also, where can I find instructions on how to reinstall the Pie Filter? I’ve got a new laptop and it’s been five years since I had to do that last time. And I’m really god-damned tired of having to scroll past this Wrong And Sinking troll.
debbie
@Right to Rise:
Elderly black women? Weren’t they the ones GOPers called to let them know the election had been moved to Thursday?
Davis X. Machina
@AxelFoley: Right message, wrong messenger.
Crab-bucket America is waiting to elect its president.
MattF
@Geoduck: Merely descriptive.
Steeplejack
@David Koch:
Yeah, that’s on my list of things to remind him about. Bro’ man thinks of himself as a savvy investor—actually, he really is a savvy investor—and that will hit home.
SatanicPanic
@Steeplejack: I think no one knows enough about Kasich right now so they’re treating him as a generic “moderate Republican” ala Romney. Once he starts telling everyone what he actually believes, people will stop thinking he’s so moderate
Dr. Dave
@PurpleGirl: She’s already saying exactly that! From an interview that was quoted on Weekend Edition yesterday morning:
Or, in other words, “I was demonstrating my competence by downsizing the successful company I was hired to run.” Just another example of conservative doublespeak–failure is success.
shell
Snort! Cause the other 49 States didnt exist during the election.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Citizen Alan: OK Cleek! has all the details.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mike in NC
All I’m seeing here is a heated discussion of pie, and that’s making me hungry.
PIGL
Nobody seems to have noticed just how brilliant is the title of this article.
Anoniminous
@Davis X. Machina:
Chairman JEB!
Frankensteinbeck
@Splitting Image:
Because Trump gives away the game. They rode ‘This isn’t racism, it’s responsibility’ for forty years, until Trump said Mexicans are rapists and murderers, and is now the leading candidate for nomination.
To pile the establishment’s woes on further, he wants to raise their taxes. Trump is the perfect proof that racism drives the Republican Party, and their policies were just excuses.
Anya
Sorry to go OT but POTUS is trolling the republicans again:
Obama to break from protocol to personally welcome Pope Francis at the airport when he arrives
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@PIGL: I was thinking… “Midnight Train to Sheboygan”, it doesn’t scan, but Sheboygan is a funny word.
MattF
@SatanicPanic: Well, W got away with the ‘compassionate conservative’ shtick. No one thought to ask him whether he would institute an Affirmative Action program for the morally impaired.
John Revolta
He’s leavin’
Leavin’ on the midnight train to Oshkosh
I’d rather he live in his world
And be without him in mine
Arm The Homeless
Anyone counting chickens on how Floriduh will vote in the general is making shit up. The judicial reappraisal of our congressional districts is bound to have unforseen ripples in the election. I’d say that on the ground organization is going to matter more than usual.
I expect a lot of red state restrictions on voter registration and Sunday voting. Out of an abundance of caution for the sanctity of the vote, i’m sure.
David Koch
Carson was on MTP and said Mooslims do not “fit within the realm of America and consistent within the Constitution” and no Mooslim should never hold the office of President.
So he just knocked Trump off the headlines.
Steeplejack
@Marc:
So it’s Trump, then? If you go by the polls.
But if Trump gets nuked by the money wing, or if he just gets bored and wanders off, one of the other clowns has to surge from below 10 percent. Jeb’s superpower seems to be the ability to anti-surge, so who does that leave?
And, as was pointed out above, the current polls have such small sample sizes and large margins of error that 2 percent is probably not really that far behind 8 percent or 10 percent.
ETA: I’m not saying Kasich is going to be the guy. I’m just saying that he scares me because he has the least crazy/frightening surface demeanor.
AxelFoley
@Steeplejack:
I guarantee you Obama voters will NOT vote for any GOPer. Many of us might have issues with Hillary (or Sanders), but no way in hell would we consider the other side. Unlike a lot of Dem voters, we’ve been awake the last 7 years. And we kept receipts.
Liberal With Attitude
@TheMightyTrowel:
Wait- I thought it was the precious bodily fluids we were supposed to be draining!
Steeplejack
@SatanicPanic:
Here’s hoping.
SatanicPanic
I hope this is a lesson to liberals run around like their hair is on fire every time some Republican governor announces- “He’s so scary, he won in a blue state”- don’t believe the hype. No Republican candidate for president is going to win, they all suck and have no chance.
You’d think everyone would have learned their lesson with Rick Perry.
Liberal With Attitude
@Anya: Yeah, if he really wanted to troll, he would present His Holiness with a crucifix made of a hammer and sickle.
rikyrah
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Steve Crandall
@JayandSteve
Walker at 0% in new national poll – WKOW 27: Madison, WI Breaking News, Weather and Sports http://www.wkow.com/story/30072499/2015/09/20/walker-at-0-in-new-national-poll#.Vf7iglCu6Us.twitter …
……………….
He never scared me, but it warms the heart – all the wasted Koch monies.
MomSense
@ruemara:
I noticed too that republicans did really well at the state level in non-presidential elections because the Obama campaign wasn’t driving the messaging, voter ID, persuasion, and GOTV. We also had a lot of Koch money in 2010 and 14.
Doug!
@ruemara:
I was never sure Walker was a great candidate, just a well-financed one who would be a truly terrible president if elected.
SatanicPanic
@MattF: 15 years ago and before Romney and Trump exposed that for the con it is.
Frankensteinbeck
@Steeplejack:
Trump is not going to be nuked by the money wing. They would have done it already if they had the ability. He very well might destroy himself. I have no idea what that would look like or who would replace him, but I’ve never seen a situation like this.
@AxelFoley:
Well put.
redshirt
I rank those who scare me most in the general:
1. TRUMP! This is new, and I add it only because maybe none of us understand the Trump phenomena.
2. Jeb! Only because.
3. Kaisch. The most serious contender but not likely to survive the primary.
4. Cruz. God help us all if he’s given a floor of 47% and only needs to gain another 3-4%.
5. Who cares. The rest are literal trolls and clowns.
Anya
@Liberal With Attitude: baby steps. You know they’ll go against the Pope now that Obama is his bff. Who will be the first GOP candidate to call the Pope a commie?
SatanicPanic
@Frankensteinbeck:
This is. We’re in some truly weird territory with the nominating process for the right. I don’t know who is going to prevail here, but whoever limps into the general, they will have been taken down several pegs by Trump and half the GOPers will distrust him. It’s beautiful to watch.
redshirt
@Anya: It’s already happened, hasn’t it?
srv
Walker is a great Governor, but he revealed his true colors when he sold his soul to those billionaires. The American people are smarter than that.
As we now see, bigotry comes at a cost. Apparently many of you prefer iCarly over Trump. Woman who destroyed a Fortune 500 company vs a guy who built a billion dollar empire.
Or you could fall for this:
The jokes, they write themselves. At least she’s smart enough to say shit like this after SNL.
Anya
@redshirt: There is no Trump phenomena. He gets the majority support of the GOP base, the 27% of the population. And they love him because he’s everything they are: ignorant, crass, racist, xenophobic, delusional and he feeds their victimhood. He also gets lots, and lots of media attention without any scrutiny
Villago Delenda Est
@David Koch: Yet again, another Republican causes Madison to roll over in his grave.
Anya
@redshirt: Fox news personalities yes, but I am not aware of any candidate yet.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Anya: sounds like George Will already has, and some random backbencher from Arizobama
MattF
@redshirt: Cruz was my primary bogeyman. Since his decline I’ve been more cautious and more skeptical about what the political media have to offer, even on the liberal side.
shell
Wonder how long itll take for Jindal and Lindsay to except the inevitable?
VOR
Walker survived the recall because they successfully made the recall vote about the legitimacy of the recall itself rather than about him. The voters weren’t pro-Walker, instead they were anti-recall.
rikyrah
Alycee
@jazziz2
Horror Drove Her From South. 100 Years Later, She Returned. http://nyti.ms/1V2lh5P
Amir Khalid
Is this Gilmore guy really running for president? I mean, he managed to miss the cut for the KIDDIE TABLE debate. How does a serious candidate do that?
ruemara
@MomSense: Local parties are sloppy & lazy which is why they lost local control. These guys were never all that.
rikyrah
this is why they liked Frank Luntz-approved language. they could pretend not to hear the dogwhistles.
Oliver Willis
@owillis
how many more bigot eruptions will it take the msm to notice the issue isn’t individual candidates or plants but the conservative movement?
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You’re not wrong. Rubio is damn near as dumb as Sarah Palin, but it’s not as obvious since he is capable of stringing a coherent sentence together occasionally.
Ruckus
@Schlemazel:
You have to go with the strengths you know. The koch’s go with deadly stupid and deadly dull. It suits them perfectly.
the Conster
Yes, Walker looks like the assistant night manager of one of Trump’s hotels, is uneducated and has zero charm or anything else, but I think that trying to run on a platform of taking away everyone’s job security, public schools, regulated utilities, health insurance, Social Security and Medicare, with an inarticulatelessness to be unable to tell even a one liner, and has to walk back everything else he proposes gives him a loser stink that even the dumbest of the dumbass bagger smells. Which I smelled early, and never believed he’d make it to the first primary. Rubio will make himself look like the idiot he is too, and Carly is not pleasant looking. She looks like she’s been paid to smile.
MomSense
@ruemara:
I agree about the sloppy part. I can’t speak to all the states although I do hear from a lot of volunteer friends in other states. Here in Maine the lack of messaging was campaign malpractice. We also waited too long to do enough advertising, etc to establish the narrative for the choice voters would make. It happens every time. We wait so long that we end up playing defense and having to counter the narrative the other side established. That is a much tougher sell.
PurpleGirl
@rikyrah: Sorry Oliver, I like you and don’t read you enough but the MSM will never realize that the problem is the conservative movement. Their corporate overloads like the conservative movement and put up with bigotry because it serves their purposes. It will continue to do so because it divides the population and makes it easier for them to maintain control (i.e., keeps low and moderate income whites from seeing what they have in common with minorities).
Doug R
@Right to Rise: Millionaire Koch whores aren’t working class.
PIGL
@VOR: that’s a distinction without a difference.
David Koch
Chuck Todd still insists the gop aren’t bigots, even when they tell him, straight to his face, that they are.
Cervantes
Unpossible.
How can it be that his having gotten married on Ronald Reagan’s birthday does not matter?
And was it not a Sign of God’s Very Personal Favor that he won his recall election on the anniversary of Reagan’s ascension to Heaven?
More to the point, and even asking about it “gives me a little bit of a shiver,” how can it be that his fondling the Reagan family Bible right there at the Library in Simi Valley was all in vain?
Surely — surely! — you are joking.
Ruckus
It’s a bit early yet to think that in 2 or 3 more months we will still have 15 morons running for the conservative monarchy. Money seems to be running out for some, bad luck on keeping exposure to an absolute minimum, answering with foot in mouth, all of these are exposing the lack of wonderfulness of the dregs of the 15. Some of them will have to drop out soon or the laughter will drown out everything they say. Of course this is predicated on the dregs having the common sense of a flat rock, which I’m betting, no make that sure, they don’t.
jeffreyw
mmm… cookie me
Ruckus
@the Conster:
I’ve seen hookers on the street with a better smile than hers, and they looked like meth addicts. Of course they actually tried to smile, maybe that’s the difference.
redshirt
@Cervantes:
WITNESS!
Cervantes
@Scotius:
Thanks!
J.D. Rhoades
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oh, but don’t you see? She says her willingness to put thousands out of work is what qualifies her to be President.
rikyrah
The Boston Globe ✔ @BostonGlobe
BREAKING: US to accept 85,000 refugees in 2016, 100,000 in 2017, Kerry says http://bos.gl/7hPDkmc
Cervantes
@Right to Rise:
Bush family motto.
gene108
@buckyblue:
Col. Klink was a decent guy.
Sure he ran a POW camp for the Nazi’s, but he was never a fanatic Nazi. He was a career soldier, who just happened to be in the service, when Hitler started WW2 in Europe.
He just wanted to make it through the end to the end of the war intact and figured his chances were better running a POW camp than being sent to the Eastern front.
Walker is not a decent guy.
He’s a hatchet man for rich fucks, who don’t give a shit about anything other than becoming even richer fucks at the expense of everyone else in society.
Whatever their lack of administrative skills may be, I think Klink had better intentions.
J.D. Rhoades
@AxelFoley:
As long as they don’t just stay home,
rikyrah
NC News Anchor Advises Black Intern to Straighten Her Hair
Sep 20, 15
*The natural hair movement is in full effect throughout the country. Women of color are beginning to embrace their God-given roots (literally), and turning away from chemicals and other hair-straightening products.
However, for some women, “natural hair” is perceived as a potential source of criticism in the workplace, making it a difficult decision to embrace.
WNCT news anchor Angela Green posted a video on her Facebook page Monday discussing natural hair at work. Green said that WNCT’s intern, Madison, wears her hair natural. Green also pointed out that she wears straight hair because her bosses prefer it that way.
From the video, you can see that Madison’s hair is curly and extremely voluminous. Green goes on to explain that Madison is preparing to start work on a production, but an issue came up with her hair.
Madison was told that her hair was too big and “distracting.” Green explained that there are people out there with all different types of hair, and how it should be worn in the workplace depends on the market you’re in, as well as your bosses.
“My advice is to straighten it out, just to please everybody,” Green stated as her advice to Madison.
She asked people on Facebook what they would tell Madison, and needless to say, some people were upset with Green for giving what they thought was horrible advice.
https://www.eurweb.com/2015/09/nc-news-anchor-advises-black-intern-to-straighten-her-hair/
Belafon
@Scotius:
Trump has really changed the dynamics of the race. The longer he lasts, the more the candidates that would have survived well into the 2012 cycle are going to get knocked out. If he does collapse, it’ll be up to the one who has the most money without trying. And that, right now, is Bush.
Romney would be in the same boat Bush is in, bumbling and behind Trump, if he tried to run right now.
Renie
@Right to Rise: Aren’t you suppose to be doing your book report? Does your Mom know what you are doing? There’s school tomorrow.
Cervantes
@debbie:
Good point. We should never let anyone forget what horrible people these are.
Cervantes
@Steeplejack:
On the other hand, when you get right down to it, Kasich is a “savvy investor” as well.
Chris
Walker’s shtick is union-busting, and while he’s not the first president that that’s been true of, the notion of having a guy with those priorities in the White House in a post-2008 world frightened me quite a bit too. I agree with you. Not that the others wouldn’t all be about as horrible in one way or other, alas.
Full metal Wingnut
@gf120581: I don’t really care how well my candidate can bullshit, but sadly it’s an important life skill.
Full metal Wingnut
@Right to Rise: sure, Jeb or Junk Ace Itch, who doesn’t have the stink of a failed president brother.
rikyrah
The State of Teacher Diversity in American Education
Teacher Diversity in the U.S. is an area of concern. The teacher work force has gotten less ethnically and racially diverse and more female, a development which has had an adverse effect on students, particularly on males of color. It is an impediment to the broader goals of equity and social harmony. ASI is working to better understand teacher labor market trends and identify promising interventions aimed at increased teacher diversity in K-12 education.
This report shows that nationally, progress toward greater diversity is being made, but it is quite modest compared to the need for more minority teachers. In the nine cities studied—Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.—the picture is much more bleak, and there are only a few pockets of progress, surrounded by serious setbacks.
http://www.shankerinstitute.org/resource/teacherdiversity
pseudonymous in nc
@Dr. Dave:
How did it feel when the HP board told you that, Carly?
Still, this is the stage of the primary calendar where, last time around, the GOP base was handing the rose to Rick Perry and Herman Cain.
What’s most hilarious about Right to Shite’s trolling is that it predicts an outcome where GOP primary voters settle for ¡Jeb! with no enthusiasm whatsoever.
Jeffro
@Debbie:
Yeah, but:
1) Having more money makes these things much closer than they would or should be…
2) Having more money keeps the wingnut welfare/wingnut wurlitzer rolling, with a much bigger megaphone than they would otherwise have…
3) Having more money helps them take their fights to the states (a la ALEC) and win safe havens for their nonsense, even though they can’t win elections nationally anymore.
Highly progressive taxation has more than one purpose, folks. Just because Mitt lost and Walker is on his way out, doesn’t mean these clowns should be left to play around with big piles of cash in our democracy.
ThresherK (GPad)
@rikyrah: Polls aren’t exact. Now to be fair, given the MoE, Walker’s actual support could be in the negative 3% range.
Eric U.
I suspect that Fiorina is the flavor of the moment with the republican voter. I’m not sure if trump is going to take a fall, but I can’t see her appeal. Even to an idiot. I see why they like Trump. Not sure it will last though.
There was an article recently that said that Fiorina was running her campaign almost solely on super PAC money. If these rich people liked her so much, why didn’t they hire her?
Full metal Wingnut
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Rubio is really the only one who can pull the same trick as Kasich-convincingly appearing moderate (although Kasich is better at it). If it weren’t for his brother, Heb would be able to pull this off too.
Rubio does need to work on his facial expressions-he often has a deer in headlights look on his face. And a little voice training would be good-he sounds whiny.
VidaLoca
@Scotius:
There’s a lot to be said on this topic but to keep it as brief as possible I’ll point to just 2 things: 1) the Democratic Party of Wisconsin is a broken husk of an organization. Uninspiring candidates, poorly thought-out platform, organizationally inept. 2) the Republican Party of Wisconsin is just the opposite. As unbelievable as it may seem, Walker ran a series of well-organized, disciplined campaigns.
@PaulW:
Or, what Paul said.
@Schlemazel:
Sad to say, the damage done here would persist no matter what ultimately happens to Walker. The Koch’s goals are different from Walker’s; they use him just like the use everyone else.
@PIGL:
Get outside the Madison-Milwaukee axis into the rural areas, particularly up north, and 3 things matter: 1) Taxes. Always taxes. 2) Guns. 3) Abortion. This dynamic can be overcome but it takes a lot of work and the Democrats are not up to it.
@AxelFoley:
Actually his margin of victory in both the June 2012 recall election and the Nov. 2014 general election was on the order of 52%-46% (roughly, and the absolute turnout numbers varied significantly).
@Davis X. Machina:
This is the lesson from Wisconsin.
@VOR:
Approximately true but there was more to it than that. The Republicans were able to create a political space in which a person could believe that the election was a referendum on the recall not a referendum on Walker’s polices. The Democrats had no counter-argument at all to this argument as it took shape (and I mean “took shape” very deliberately, it wasn’t just an idea that sprung into peoples’ heads spontaneously); in fact by running the same candidate in the recall that had lost the general election just 20 months earlier they reinforced the idea that they were sore losers, that they wanted a “do-over” for an election that they could not win legitimately.
scav
Wonder which low-performing negative revenue state will be the first to be spun off and sold to a foreign nation under a business-trained CEO-president. I mean, it’s difficult, painful, telling mere people they’re not citizens anymore, but cuts have to be made so that shareholders get maximum return on their investment. Dead weight is dead weight.
Full metal Wingnut
@shell: Yes, Christie’s embrace of Obama helped deliver New Jersey, which surely would have gone for Romney but for Sandy, and swung the election to Obama.
Full metal Wingnut
@Anya: when was the last time a Democratic president flipped the bird (with both hands!) to the Republicans like obama’s been doing this past year? My god, it’s been glorious.
Right to Rise
@rikyrah:
Affirmative Action is, ironically, partly to blame. If you’re a black college graduate who is even minimally competent you can write your ticket. Why would you go into a low salary profession like teaching?
The other problem is much more stringent testing standards, and minority males just can’t meet the required scores. Loosen up the content knowledge testing requirements and you will get more blacks teaching, it’s not like you need to know that much more than the kids to teach anyway. It’s a babysitting job by and large
Chris
@Steeplejack:
Tell your brother it doesn’t matter if he is reasonable. There may still be Republican politicians here and there who could at least govern adequately if it were just them. But it’s not just them; in order to survive in the modern Republican Party, a politician has to make so many deals to placate and win the support of the crooks, the lunatics, and the crooked lunatics, that he might as well be one of them.
Even if Republicans were to somehow nominate a reincarnated FDR, it wouldn’t matter – he’d never be able to “be” FDR, so to speak. The entire movement is the problem, not one guy.
John Revolta
@srv: Apparently many of you prefer iCarly over Trump.
I’m not sure “prefer” is the mot fucking juste here bunky.
I mean, I’d “prefer” to have my head chopped off than to be burned at the stake. But c’mon.
Ajabu
@rikyrah:
Thanks for that. What an extraordinary lady! And, as an added bonus, I’m wondering if she might be a relative.
My Mother in Law was born a Lang in Alabama.
I’m going to find out and let you know.
Thanks again for a reminder of where we’ve been…
Want to check out my side of the family?
We didn’t play in the Islands.
http://www.vide.vi/data/userfiles/Contract%20Day.pdf
Right to Rise
An interesting idea I and many others have for education reform is to experiment with changing the profession of teaching into a more 21st Century, Uber-like model.
Ex. have the local pharmacist come part time to teach a block of chemistry. It’s something people could do on the side. No healthcare costs, no pension costs, no benef costs at all–The taxpayer would have more money in his pocket, and I think you’d get more knowledgeable people teaching to boot.
brent
@rikyrah: That does raise some interesting issues with regard to the ways that television news is predisposed to a very conservative and conformative way of thinking. i mean, I get what Green is saying. Television news people are expected to conform to a very limited visual template and it was always thus. (Its probably part of the reason that I find television news to be nigh unwatchable.) So hers not an entirely unreasonable suggestion in the context of that sort of workplace.
On the other hand really, that woman’s hair is fucking beautiful and you would think that in a medium that relies pretty heavily on the aesthetic charisma of its presenters, that would be a big plus in favor of her keeping it as it is.
SFAW
Even after RtR was shown that Jeb!’s “surge” is not unlike the Mets’ “surge” in 2007, he’s still playing pretend.
What’s that old saying? Oh yeah: “None is so blind as he who has his head so far up his ass that he can tell what he ate for lunch.”
But RtR does provide comic relief. Sandy? Old black women? Don’t forget the all important transgender Albanian Jew vote – it can upend an entire election strategery.
Right to Rise
@SFAW:
I’m telling you: I looked deep at the data from that election. Elderly black women put in key states put Obama over the top.
They won’t turn out for Hillary nearly as much.
the Conster
@Right to Rise:
Let’s do that for cops too.
Right to Rise
@the Conster:
Apples and oranges. Though I think the private sector could play a larger role in law enforcement.
the Conster
@Right to Rise:
No, it isn’t.
Chris
@gene108:
I thought Schultz was the decent guy. Klink was just a spineless nitwit who failed upwards into a commandant position.
sharl
Twitter has horked up a hairball…again (evergreen observation):
This account is very new, and at the stage where Weird/Irony Twitter people are pointing fingers at each other and saying “You’re behind this, aren’t you?!?!” But ace journalist Mark Halperin really is a follower of the account.
rikyrah
@gf120581:
BWA HA HA HA HA HA
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
Not clear than it’s a strong enough negative, once the RWSM gets involved. Sounds like she’s already got a bullshit response, and the “independents” in the General are probably not the brightest bulbs in the drawer. W destroyed two or three companies, it didn’t seem to hurt him. And, as others have said, the voluminous layoffs only make Carly more attractive to those real ‘Muricans that vote Rethug.
I heard a rumor that Boxer’s campaign gave their oppo to some nameless Rethug’s campaign; be interesting to see if there’s anything to it, and what results from it.
Renie
@Right to Rise: Your idea is horrible. Just because you are trolling for pennies and live in your mommy’s basement doesn’t mean everyone else wants to live their life like that. Most of us have more ambitions for ourself than you do.
Mike in NC
@Right to Rise: Only place you’re looking deep is up your asshole, where your tiny ‘brain’ is located.
redshirt
LOL Private sector law enforcement.
rikyrah
@David Koch:
you always crack me up in how you point Jeb out
Right to Rise
@redshirt:
I said they have a role to play. Contractors etc could save the taxpayer money.
@Renie:
The taxpayer has ambition, too, and he achieves them in the private sector.
SFAW
@Right to Rise:
Yeah, I’ve seen how well you look at data
As I said then, you’re either a parody troll, or fucking stupid beyond belief. I was willing to go with the parody troll, but each imbecilic comment you make — and they are myriad — tips the scale more and more toward “fucking stupid.”
Full metal Wingnut
@Renie: why do so many people want to cut corners on education?
Of course, I already know the answer. Public education is for the riffraff.
dedc79
@SFAW:
Hey, let’s not drag the Mets into this. Especially given that they’ve got a similar division lead with a similar amount of games left as in 2007.
Ajabu
@Right to Rise:
“Affirmative Action is, ironically, partly to blame. If you’re a black college graduate who is even minimally competent you can write your ticket. Why would you go into a low salary profession like teaching?
The other problem is much more stringent testing standards, and minority males just can’t meet the required scores. Loosen up the content knowledge testing requirements and you will get more blacks teaching, it’s not like you need to know that much more than the kids to teach anyway. It’s a babysitting job by and large”
Well, it’s nice to see that your moronic and easily disproven “facts” extend beyond the current political situation.
Fucking imbecile.
Citizen Alan
@rikyrah:
I have often been struck by the question of whether Obama could have been elected President if Michelle O had not straightened her hair. It’s a profoundly sad question that depresses me about the state of US race relations, but I honestly do suspect it would have mattered enough with some people to make a difference.
Surreal American
@Chris:
For most career-minded Luftwaffe officers, POW Camp Kommandant is not indicative of an upwardly mobile path.
Chris
@redshirt:
Having failed to wrap its head around “Green Eggs And Ham,” the conservative movement now turns to “Robocop” for inspiration.
SFAW
@Right to Rise:
So you’re saying that either
1) Jeb! doesn’t pay taxes
or
2) Jeb! has no ambition.
Why would you want to vote for someone like that?
rikyrah
@Right to Rise:
McCauliffe was a boring White guy in Virginia, and yet, the Black vote came out for him.
Oh, BTW, Even if we lost Virginia and Florida, we’re still at 290.
Barack Obama showed how to win the Electoral College without One Southern State.
Right to Rise
@SFAW:
Jeb worked in the private sector after being governor.
Right to Rise
@rikyrah:
And it was much, much closer than it should have been. And that was with Cooch on the top of the ticket, who is an absolute nutbar.
Citizen Alan
@Eric U.:
To me, iCarly has every negative trait of Mitt Romney except that instead of being a Mormon, she’s a woman.
SFAW
@dedc79:
As a Mets fan for more than 50 years (suck it, libtards! no, wait, I mean …), I am painfully aware of that situation.
The 2007 nosedive was the most applicable parallel to Jeb!’s recent polling, which RtBFS claimed is a “surge.”
Chris
@Surreal American:
The fact that he even made it as high as commandant is remarkable in itself.
(Also, while being the commandant of a POW camp isn’t a glamorous assignment, it also keeps him far from the Russian Front, which is his greatest fear for most of the show).
Cacti
@Citizen Alan:
Carly is the beta version of Mitt.
Willard was a highly successful vulture capitalist who made lots of money for his investors.
Carly was the dog’s dinner as a CEO.
Ruckus
@pseudonymous in nc:
Didn’t Carly walk away with enough money that the losing the job sting was effectively zero? If everyone got that kind of deal, people would be standing in line to be fired. I know I was when a week after I gave notice once the CEO told me that he could still fire me. I begged him to and when he asked why I explained that I would get 10 weeks pay due to how long I’d worked there. Quitting I’d get nothing. It wouldn’t have been much like her golden parachute but it wouldn’t have been nothing. Bastard declined to give me an extra cent. I walked away laughing.
SFAW
@Right to Rise:
Dodging the question, as always.
Since when did Preznit become a Private Sector job, imbecile? I mean, I know that’s what Rethugs want, so they can “fire” (a/k/a deport) anyone they don’t like, but the country ain’t there yet.
SRW1
@Right to Rise:
Stay the course! A thousand points of light! Stay the course!
Anoniminous
Comrade RtR:
Per the party line developed by Comrade Chairman Mao in 1947 and later re-introduced in the ‘Red and Expert’ campaign during the Cultural Revolution.
Right to Rise
@SFAW:
It isn’t, but those with private sector experience are best suited for the job. Looking at the bottom line, cutting spending, eliminating waste and bloat, keeping costs low, saving the shareholders (taxpayers) money, that’s what I want in a president.
Tom
@Right to Rise: What does the GOP have against working-class white men?
Oh, right…..
SFAW
@Ruckus:
Just like “the little people.”
Surreal American
@Chris:
Points taken. And I agree that Walker is more Klink than Schultz.
Ruckus
@Eric U.:
They are trying to put her out of their way and put her to good use, for them destroying the government and taxes is always good. OK until it actually happens and they find out what exactly that means.
Being wrong in that big a way is not a mark of someone’s failure it’s a mark of the risk they are willing to take. /rich bastards
Tom
@debbie: So he was employed by Lehman but had nothing to do with them whatsoever.
Nice work if you can get it.
dedc79
@SFAW: Big game tonight. The Nats look like they’re gonna pick up another W this afternoon, unfortunately.
gVOR08
I fear Kasich. He’s Walker without the stupid.
Tom
@David Koch: What exactly is it about ‘no religious tests for public office’ that the brilliant and successful Dr. Carson doesn’t understand?
Right to Rise
Kasich is going nowhere because Jeb is going to win NH, and without NH, Kasich is toast.
Tom
@the Conster: Jackie Kashian, a comedian from Wisconsin, has a Scott Walker joke. Something about how he’s in favor of arming teachers but is also trying to take away their benefits.
“I’m taking away your pension but here’s a gun.”
Apparently he didn’t think this through.
SFAW
@Right to Rise:
Still dodging it, only now wrapped in more bullshit. And Lehman Brothers (or wherever Jeb! went to peddle influence) is the kind of “private sector” company that came close to killing the US Economy in 2008. Good to know that it’s what you want, you fucking traitor. Well, not a traitor to Rethug ideals, of course
You should look into your local Morons Anonymous chapter, they might help you recover from being one.
Cervantes
@Tom:
Did this obvious follow-up question occur to Chuck Todd?
Did he ask it?
Ruckus
@Tom:
It’s hard to tell which is bigger for Carson, the box he keeps his doctors life in, or the one he keeps the stupid in. As time goes on and more and more proof is shown, I’m going with the stupid box is much bigger. Bigger and not locked tightly away in the attic.
Ruckus
@Cervantes:
How could you type that, laughing that hard and typing at the same time is quite difficult.
SFAW
@Right to Rise:
Tough for Jeb! to win NH with less than 8 percent of the vote as he currently has (and dropping). Maybe he can get Meldrim Thompson, Judd Gregg, and John Sunununununununuuuuuuuuuuu to run, draw votes from iCarly and The Donald.
Renie
@Full metal Wingnut:All these education reformers want charter schools where they get public tax dollars to pay for their schools.
It’s the Republican way, privatize everything. Here where I live the Republicans privatized the bus service two years ago claiming nothing would change. Their goal was made cuz its off their books but the bus company is in debt for the second year in a row; has raised fares 3x and is again eliminating routes. And who gets hurt the most? The working poor who cannot afford cars to drive in this ‘car happy’ suburbia I live in.
Right to Rise
I like how to liberals, a world-renowned pediatric brain surgeon is “stupid” because he doesn’t share their political philosophy.
The only attack you have is to call conservatives either stupid or evil. You’ve got nothing else.
Chris
@Tom:
They’ve had a shtick going for years that Islam is not a religion but an all-encompassing political ideology, and shouldn’t be treated as a religion.
Of course, that simply moves the goalposts from “freedom of religion” to “freedom of speech.” But back in the Cold War days, they had a similar shtick about how it would be wrong to treat communism like an ordinary legitimate political ideology, because communism wasn’t just a political ideology, it was a conspiracy.
Ruckus
@gVOR08:
He has other republican qualities that more than make up for any lack of stupid he might be showing over walker.
SatanicPanic
It’s interesting how Trump is proving that baggers don’t actually care about entitlement reform.
Right to Rise
@Renie:
That’s what happens when you need to cut costs and pay down debt. It’s the responsible thing to do.
What’s irresponsible is putting the taxpayer on the hook for a boondoggle.
SFAW
@dedc79:
I’m not a great baseball mind, like Terry Collins, but I’ve noted that the Mets have been having a tough time scoring runs that aren’t the result of a home run. That, to me, is a big problem. Of course, it’s better than the not-scoring-any-runs spell they went through in June, but it’s not good for making past the first round – if they make it that far.
Tom
@Right to Rise: The depth of your ignorance about teaching is staggering.
EriktheRed
My half-brother in Wis. loves him some Scott Walker (he’s in Paul Ryan’s district and I’m sure it’ll be no surprise he loves him, too). For a while he was constantly posting stuff on Facebook about Gov. Dead-eyes’ campaign stops. He hasn’t said anything about him the last few weeks.
I’ve been so tempted to post bad news about Scotty’s troubles lately, but I still want him to visit every now and then.
Right to Rise
@Tom:
You’re saying that affirmative action doesn’t exist?
I wouldn’t want to be a teacher if I were a college educated black man, either. I could write my own ticket at that point, especially if I’m smart enough to pass the licensure exams. Why work for a low salary in some shit district like Chicago or New Orleans?
Teaching as currently constituted will always be a SWPL white female job. You know, white girl from the suburbs deluded into thinking she can “save” kids in the ghetto.
Tom
@Right to Rise: Once again you prove your astounding ignorance about teaching.
How do you dress yourself in the morning? By assuming that you do, I’m of course giving you the benefit of the doubt.
Right to Rise
@Tom:
You’re telling me being a public school teacher, particularly in black and poverty-heavy districts, is a desireable job? Lol!
SFAW
@Right to Rise:
Every liberal here acknowledges that Carson, as a world-renowned neurosurgeon, is smart in that realm.
However, as with many surgeons, they think their intelligence in the field of medicine means that they are smart everywhere else. This is not the case, regarding Carson. His response re: climate change, for example, indicated that he merely parrots Rethug talking points – said talking points having an agenda other than the “common good.” Does that make him stupid or evil? I don’t know, it’s one or the other, perhaps both.
dedc79
@Right to Rise: Think of it this way. We think you’re a moron when it comes to government/politics/policy, but we don’t rule out your being a great brain surgeon. See, glass half full.
SFAW
@Right to Rise:
It ABSOLUTELY exists. If Jeb!’s name was John Ellis Buschwanstein, we’d never have heard of him. (Well, unless his father George Buschwanstein had been President, that is)
THAT, moron, is getting where you are because of affirmative action.
Right to Rise
Tom is a typical liberal in this way: all he does is preen that I’m “ignorant” without actually refuting any of my points. Most of liberalism is preening and posing about how much smarter you are than the conservatives. But it’s just that: posing.
Just like many will talk about how great diversity, and how racist conservatives are, but live in 98% white census tracts (ex. Chris Matthews).
Tom
@Right to Rise: It’s good to know that we both agree that teachers need to be paid more and have better benefits.
SFAW
@Right to Rise:
Unlike Rethugs, some people in this world have a desire to serve their fellow man – not predicated on how much money or power that fellow man has – and are (relatively) happy to do the jobs that you Rethug mofos turn up your pampered noses at.
Cervantes
@Right to Rise:
Of course, it exists — and most of its beneficiaries have not been African-Americans.
1. Don’t worry, I can assure you that you’re not a teacher.
2. Do you know what the unemployment rate is for college-educated African-American males, compared to the rate for all college graduates?
SFAW
@Right to Rise:
Says the troll who hasn’t refuted any of the points regarding his love object, Jeb!
Glad you admit that we are smarter than you.
No doubt this is more of your “looking deep into the data.” Thanks for the laughs.
Chyron HR
@Right to Rise:
Hey, I found the “Party of Racial and Gender Grievance”.
Schlemazel
@Right to Rise:
Well, the fact that the constitution specifically states that there can be no religious test for public office and Dr. Carson states being Muslim it would unconstitutional for a Muslim to be President means he is either stupid or a liar. You choose, which is he?
LookingForACanadian
I read Balloon Juice mainly via Newsify/Feedly. For the last several months, Newsify in particular hasn’t been picking up (correct phrase??) the RSS regularly so I open Chrome and read from there. Feedly seems to be okay (Newsify and Feedly are apparently connected somehow since reading on one/other updates across)
Any guesses as to why?
SFAW
@Schlemazel:
You left out “crazy” and “evil” as choices, you know.
sharl
@Right to Rise:
I hope your boss signal boosts stuff like this. It will give the Dems good raw material for online and broadcast ads, but beyond that, it may give some much-needed visibility to the causes of cash-strapped organizations who are working to reduce child incarceration and privatization of prisons.
Did you see/like Robocop? I sure liked it; seen it several times! But as I recall, one of the underlying themes of the movie involved privatization of law enforcement, and it wasn’t portrayed in a favorable light. You guys should produce a film on the good things about police privatization, and how it serves to protect shiny, happy people in wealthy gated communities. Guaranteed winner! (You’re welcome.)
boatboy_srq
@Villago Delenda Est: HP was bad, but when it comes to forecasting what she’d be like as a leader I think Lucent was worse. She deliberately steered THE telecom hardware maker away from Internet products, focusing instead on voice-specific tech (think POTS and POTS² instead of TCP/IP). Lucent tanked and got picked up by Alcatel for peanuts, and Cisco and a few others ate Lucent’s lunch, first in the data world and now increasingly in the voice world as well. That says a lot more about Fiorina’s foresight and leadership than the fiasco at HP does, even though for the workers and the brand it’s arguable her stint at HP was worse.
Schlemazel
@SFAW:
Truth is I don’t think he is stupid but knows those who might vote for him are. That would make him evil when he tells lies like that one.
boatboy_srq
@Schlemazel: @SFAW: I’ll take crazy stupid liar lying evilly for $100, Alex…
the Conster
OT: So h8ers, the Pats have cleverly invented a new way to cheat your opponents into making ridiculous penalties. LOL. While on the subject of cheating, this expose of the NFL by 60 Minutes Sports about Deflategate, PROVES NOTHING HAPPENED.
Renie
@Right to Rise: Whats irresponsible is taking a bus service that worked fine, then selling it off to your friends who claim its in debt so they can justify raising the fares and cutting expenses so they can make a higher profit at the expense of poor people who need the service.
Cervantes
@Schlemazel:
He could simply be ignorant as to what the Constitution requires.
Which might mean he’s stupid to run for president.
Or that he’s a demagogue.
Or that he’s lying about the purpose of his campaign.
Or that the whole thing is one big joke.
Svensker
@Right to Rise:
OK, no way this is not a spoof troll.
redshirt
@the Conster: Haters gonna hate.
They hate us cuz they ain’t us.
Renie
@Tom: He doesn’t get dressed cuz he’s in his pjs in his mommy’s basement all day trolling websites for JEB’s pennies.
Schlemazel
I’d also like to give right to retch a good example of his love objects stupidity. We lived in Florida in when JEB? first ran and lost the governorship. He selected as his lt. Gov a guy who was on the record slamming Hispanics and Jews. Ignore the racist angle for a moment and imagine how stupid a Florida politican has to be to willingly offend those two blocks.
It’s no surprise that old Lawton took JEB? apart.
LookingForACanadian
I think the key question for RTR is, how badly doesn’t it feel about itself that it finds what it’s doing here remotely worth its time? Even if paid, my goodness what an embarrassing way to “live” (assuming it’s not a robot, in which case I stand down)
Right to Rise
@Schlemazel:
I remember what happened the last time you dismissed a Bush as “stupid”.
Mike J
@the Conster: I remember 60 minutes PROVING Obama personally killed everyone at Beghazi.
Frankensteinbeck
@Renie:
This is one of those deals that has kept the plutocrats and the culture warriors together for so long. Take education. Cultural conservatives want public education destroyed. The racists don’t want their children mixing with blacks. The Christianists don’t want their children finding out there’s any other way to live, in case they stop holding still for Josh. The armageddon nuts think public schools are how the government brainwashes their children. The IGMFY crowd are sending their kids to private school, and want that to be as easy as possible. And the plutocrats and their grifter minions see a pile of money to be made.
Note that race hate is a primary part of the first three groups, so if a presidential candidate were to, oh, declare that Mexicans are rapists and murderers and should be deported, that would be WAY better than picking at the issues around the edges. The plutocrats would suddenly be on shaky ground.
divF
@Right to Rise:
The 9/11 attacks. Don’t worry, we’ll make sure that is not forgotten.
Schlemazel
@Cervantes:
Nominating boy blunder was one big joke. The punchline will leave bruises for years, maybe generations. I can’t bring myself to laugh at his dumber brother or a former surgeon that plays dumb
the Conster
@redshirt:
Brady/GRONK/Lewis/Edelman look really really good. LOL. Hope they run up the score every game.
Chyron HR
@Right to Rise:
The worst terrorist attack in American history?
Hey, why aren’t you pimping #HeKeptUsSafe anymore? Don’t you want the coveted millennial voters who Google “Right to Rise” to go on Twitter and find out about how #HeKeptUsSafe?
SFAW
@boatboy_srq:
One of my mantras is “Republicans: Crazy, Stupid, Evil? Pick three.”
Seen little to persuade me I’m wrong.
the Conster
@Mike J:
Did you watch the part about the gauges? It’s all such bullshit.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Chris:
True.
SFAW
@Chyron HR:
Isn’t it #HeKeptUsScaredOrTriedTo?
Schlemazel
@Right to Rise:
How can I forget? We had 9/11, the worst market crash in 70 years, an illegal unnecessary war that is still draining the nation. Add the inaction on climate change, the increased pollution of the nation and a thousand little injuries. That the family calls JEB? The dumber of the 4 brothers should scare the hell out of voters but they have paid trolls like you and help from the liberal media to hide the truth.
boatboy_srq
@divF: @Chyron HR: 9/11, the biggest attack on the US in 50 years and the single greatest loss of civilian life; the “Jobless Recovery” of 2002-4; Katrina; the second-greatest economic crash in US history; Enron; six years of ignoring nearly every single human rights agreement the US signed (and advocated for when they were initially proposed); wars of choice with the “Coalition of the Willing”; an entirely new, largely unnecessary cabinet-level post and matching department, five plus years of US AgGenl pursuit of state AGs for purely partisan reasons; … do we really need to count all these for RightToSpew? Some of them s/he’s probably proud of.
Some guy
Jeb drops one or two points after every debate. 4 more debates and he’ll be at the lower bound of zero.
Yooooge loser.
Chris
@boatboy_srq:
Kerry’s FTFY was a good one. “Coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought, and the extorted.”
Right to Rise
@Chris:
Kerry’s line was an insult and a slap in the face to those American allies who went with us into Iraq.
But hey, the flip-flopper lost.
Here: have a little trip down memory lane.
Chris
@Right to Rise:
Yes, I’m sure Kerry lost because the American people cared deeply about the hurt feelings of our allies.
Ruckus
I still don’t understand why we seem to be giving this idiot a soapbox to stand on. He’s either being paid to be this stupid or he really is this stupid. It’s a difference without a distinction. We aren’t playing bagpipes to drown him out, people are trying to engage him in discussion and he isn’t capable nor willing. He is a fucking idiot. He will never be anything but a fucking idiot. Could we please stop giving him a reason to continue being a fucking idiot here?
boatboy_srq
@Chris: Good one.
And I won’t link back to BileToRise there, but s/he sounds exactly like the soccer moms with Gadsden license plates and Support Our Troops magnetic stickers who whine and cry every time anyone brings up the casualty rates, the p!ss-poor equipping that the OIF forces got, the VA, lender shenanigans with servicepeople’s mortgages, and any and every public policy effort to help servicepeople or veterans because “we can’t afford it” or some similar garbage. They just can’t differentiate between soldiers doing what they’re ordered to do and the stupid fvcks who order them into unwinnable conflicts for totally indefensible reasons; and they have no respect for anyone in uniform unless s/he’s in some foreign country risking his/her life so they can keep on burning $3/gal petrol in their 8mpg Hummers.
Right to Rise
@Ruckus:
Shorter Ruckus:
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Wah-ha-waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Keep crying, baby.
WaterGirl
Once again, with our help, RtR takes up a third of the thread, making it pretty worthless.
Germy Shoemangler
Pink Out Day – Stand With Planned Parenthood
https://istandwithpp.org/events
SFAW
@Right to Rise:
Thanks to Ken Blackwell fucking with the Ohio voting.
Yeah, yeah, he forgot Poland (!) whatever. Good to know you’re clueless regarding ALL things Bush.
Germy Shoemangler
@WaterGirl: Off topic, but I’m curious: what ever happened with your neighbor’s driveway? Did everything work out okay for you, I hope?
Mike in NC
@Some guy: Here was JEB! the other day —
Where JEB!’s comatose campaign style inspired a standing ovation from the 12 people in attendance. Trump would have stood before an overflow crowd, speaking to them in English.
scav
@WaterGirl: Well,his sort have pretty much done the same to the national conversation and the intellectual worth of the nation. So we just may be seeing a representative sample here.
Right to Rise
@SFAW:
Oh my God, you’re into the whole IT WAS STOLEN MAN line of thinking about ’04?
What a fucking loser.
Bush won. He fucking WON. TWICE. so suck on it.
Suck. On. It.
And Jeb is going to do it all over again.
boatboy_srq
@Chris: Actually it should be a slap in the face. The US proved in 2002 and 2003 that it could not be trusted to act responsibly on the international stage with Shrub at the helm: not in Afghanistan, not in Iraq, not towards North Korea, not regarding Kyoto, not at the UN, not nowhere. Any foreign power who believed the trash coming out of the WH, the CIA, the NSA and any other intel bureau at the time deserves to be whacked forcefully in the head. Shrub squandered the US’ reputation, global goodwill and any shred of trust on the international stage. The rest of the “coalition” deserve sympathy for being so deluded, but they also merit scorn for believing the Bush!t.
Chris
@Ruckus:
I have the same question about why this kind of shit practically never gets deleted. This website’s deathly allergy to the kind of basic troll control that most websites of its kind have no trouble performing has always been the one thing wrong with an otherwise awesome part of the Internets.
I mostly don’t engage the trolls (yes, I’m aware that I just violated that… “guideline” myself). But hey, as long as Cole and the rest of the FPers are fine with letting this kind of thing fester under their roof, I can’t blame the other guests for noticing and engaging with it. This is, for better or for worse, part of what makes Balloon Juice what it is.
Right to Rise
As for Iraq, the surge worked and Bush left office with the war won–Obama lost the peace by not leaving troops in.
America’s military was not defeated on the battlefield, it was defeated in the backrooms of the White House by spineless civilians. The chaos in Iraq today is his fault for putting keeping bullshit campaign promises above realistic foreign policy.
Germy Shoemangler
@Mike in NC:
Onion headline and article: Extension Cord On Stage Steals Spotlight From Jeb Bush During Campaign Rally
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I can’t understand why anybody as supposedly on the ball as the Kochs would ever have turned to somebody as blatantly awful as Walker. I don’t mean that in a political way. I know that for the Kochs, the more awful somebody is politically, the better. I mean it in a personal way.
Walker is the kind of guy who, if you found yourself stuck next to him at any kind of gathering, you’d chew your own arm off to get away from him. He’s like a black hole of charisma. Not only does he not radiate any kind of charm or personality or interest or any other vibe of humanity at all, I think he sucks it in from all around him. Anybody who talks to the guy for two minutes will come away less interesting for having come within Walker’s charisma event horizon.
You know what I mean? Why would these ostensibly practical people have latched onto this loser? Of all the pathetic boobs they could have taken on, why Walker? The only one worse I can think of is Jindal, who is such a zero that I see him as the kind of wretch who tries to rise to Walker’s level of scintillating charm and can’t even pull that off.
But, really. They should have roped in somebody like Cruz or Huckabee, who are, like Walker, soulless dickheads, and easily bought and ordered around, but who, unlike Walker, can captivate people. They’re awful people, and they have awful, nasty, loathsome personalities, but, clearly, they are captivating to the kind of people the Kochs need to go out and vote. But they went for Walker. I just find this astounding and inexplicable…
Chris
@boatboy_srq:
No, they don’t even deserve sympathy. Or rather, their people do: but their governments, which were flipping the bird to large majorities of their own public, don’t. They were exactly what John Kerry labeled them as.
Germy Shoemangler
Quote Of The Day
raven
Chickenhawk coward motherfuckers like this asshole that YOU continue to talk to on this blog are fucking clueless.
boatboy_srq
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Cruz and Huckabee come with baggage that the Kochs aren’t interested in: Texan secession talk, Xtian pseudomoralizing, etc etc. Lots of things that Objectivist Libertarian Job Creators aren’t all that interested in, which limit the candidates’ ability to reach out to the
deluded“undecided voters”. Walker – at least on the surface – doesn’t have that kind of baggage.Germy Shoemangler
@raven: There you go again introducing facts into the discussion.
SRW1
@Some guy:
If only John Ellis had the enthusiasm and the energy of his troll.
rikyrah
It’s been a fascinating exercise, watch the MSM trying to explain away the pure, unadulterated hate of the GOP, since they can’t hide behind dogwhistles.
they show who they are. they show how pitiful they are. and, they show their hand.
mai naem mobile
@Right to Rise: what did dumdum say once – ‘There’s that saying you fool me again once, you the fool me again, I the once again.’ That saying, lemme tell you we don’t want in the America, in the Afghanistan, in the Iraq again. Shit, that was Miss South Carolina,not Dumdum and even she was smarter than Dumdum.
Right to Rise
@mai naem mobile:
Bush won.
Twice.
Scoreboard, motherfucker. Scoreboard. He’s 2-0 against Democratic presidential opponents.
Stillwater
@Doug!: I think Rubio might be the favorite now.
I normally disagree with just about everything you say concerning politics, but I have to agree with you about this.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@boatboy_srq:
Well, I guess that may be right. At least somebody like Suckabee or Cruz might stand a shot at getting the nomination, though. I cannot for the life of me see how those guys thought Walker could ever have gotten even that far.
I mean, yeah, he won in Wisconsin, but that was in a wave year, and I don’t know the circumstances behind his nomination in 2010. Could it have been that when Walker was first running in 2010 for the nomination, people didn’t think it was going to be a wave year, and so nobody else ran? Or maybe the Kochs just plain bought him the nomination? I don’t know.
But, well, you can’t win the presidency unless you win the nomination first, and I can’t see how the Kochs could have ever conned themselves into believing that this guy had any shot at all at the nomination.
JPL
@the Conster: The Falcons won, so that’s good. We only had one game to watch at one and it was the local team. Congrats to the Pats, though.
Chris
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
The explanation might be as simple as “the Kochs aren’t very good at judging the likability of potential candidates.”
Right to Rise
Again Rubio is a kid, he looks like he’s playing dress-up. He has no chance. And by running despite the fact that Jeb is the Florida favorite son, he fucked himself out of a cabinet position.
The Bushes don’t forget being backstabbed.
Germy Shoemangler
@Schlemazel:
The stupidity is breathtaking. A rich kid who would be assistant manager of a used-car dealership somewhere if not for his family name.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Hell, who knows, though. Maybe they really conned themselves into believing that they could buy that clown the nomination. Whatever led them to do it, though, it’s good to see that they’ve thrown away shitloads of money for nothing. I hope it was hundreds of millions.
Ruckus
Gov. Kasich has stated he is willing to sign a bill from the OH legislature banning abortions that an unborn was diagnosed with Downs syndrome.
For those of you who may think he is the sanest of the 15, he may be but that is a very low bar and Kasich has slithered under it many times. Would he be dangerous as any of the 15? My bet is maybe more, because he seems less crazy than the others. He isn’t.
sharl
Y’all can ignore RtR, or engage it, but over the past ~2 years I’ve seen neither work to make it go away. Whatev.
Germy Shoemangler
@Chris: Libertarians really aren’t good at the whole business of judging likeability.
Morzer
@sharl:
It sure is a shame that the redesigned blog doesn’t include a ban the boring troll feature…..
raven
@Morzer: pie
sharl
@Morzer: True enough. I’ve never tried it, but there is always the pie filter. I figure though that as long as I could scroll easily past the quickly incoming m-c and LB comments back in the day, the (usually) less frequent spewings of RtR are no problem.
Morzer
@raven:
Well, if you are going to be all technical about it… but I really don’t see why the frontpager Committee of Public Safety hasn’t just introduced the critter to Madame La Guillotine and saved us all time and pie filters.
raven
@Morzer: Nice.
Chris
@Morzer:
Isn’t it, though?
Surreal American
@Chyron HR:
#HeKeptCheneyInAManSizedSafe
Patrick
@boatboy_srq:
These are also the very same folks that seem to think that wars are free. They refuse to pay for the Iraq war with higher taxes or a special war tax. They refuse to do any kind of sacrifice for the war that they at the time found to be so critical.
Howard Beale IV
@Right to Rise:
Who’s paying you to troll here? Did the doctor drop you on the floor when you were delivered?
You’re even dumber than Hucklberry Closetcase.
Morzer
@Patrick:
Well, you have to understand that the Laffer curve includes the prediction that the more taxpayers are slaughtered, the lower rates of tax evasion drop, so ultimately revenue rises. The problem is that we just didn’t lose enough people in Iraq for the curve to blossom fully, so to speak.
Ruckus
@Chris:
Had a nice answer for you but FYWP strikes again.
Bottom line, freedom of speech and ignoring trolls are two different concepts.
@sharl:
Thinks that won’t make him go away and while that is maybe true, I’ve yet to see a troll completely ignored either but there are trolls that were here years ago that no longer are and they were just as annoying, they leave when they get no attention, it may just take a while.
Ruckus
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Maybe the problem is giving the koch brothers too much political credit.
Howard Beale IV
ABC News contacted a Carson staffer, who said that “Dr Carson stands by his quote that Islam is not consistent with the Consitution.”
So friends, if you ever see Dr. Carson in an accident, render no aid and let him meet his Maker.
Mike in NC
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): To my knowledge the Kochs have never expressed an interest in courting the Religious Right. They’re simply greedy oligarchs looking for the lowest possible rate of taxation and regulation, and boring Scott Walker looked like the right candidate to deliver the unwashed masses who reliably vote against their economic self-interest.
Cruz and Huckleberry might have been seen by the Kochs as scary snake-handlers (which they are, of course).
Patrick
@Howard Beale IV:
If we have to go there, can’t the same idiotic logic be said for Christianity considering Kim Davis.
sharl
@Ruckus: Hopefully you are right, but given the (IMO) fact that it has never convinced anyone during its years trolling here to change their political opinion, let alone their vote, another possibility has occurred to me (which I hope is wrong): it is otherwise unemployable, but is a relative of someone with major juice with the GOP – party leader? big donor? doesn’t really matter… – who recognizes it could score “own goals” if put in the wrong place. So they throw it a pocket full of nickels, pat it on the head, and tell it to go annoy one or more leftish blog sites, where it won’t convince anyone, but will at least aggravate people.
In that case, banning or pie filter will be the only viable options. Ignoring it wouldn’t work (if that theory is correct), since it gets paid regardless.
Applejinx
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): That’s very easy.
The Kochs like Walker because Walker is willing to be an absolute monster, just like them. Walker’s the one who got a ‘This American Life’ segment about how he hunted down and killed the chances of a Republican loyalist kid to work in government, because the kid had been involved in the recall election since his Mom was a teacher.
Walker hunted down and blacklisted the kid who was going to be ON HIS SIDE and who, even after that, remained loyal to the Republicans.
THAT is why the Kochs like Walker. Walker is prepared to be a freaking absolute tyrant, and the Kochs like it. It’s what they’d do, or perhaps they’re calling those shots. That’s the reason I’ve disliked Walker most: to be that big of a monster is both cold and worryingly effective with authoritarian followers. That’s how you get the brownshirts to not only hate on THEIR enemies, but to go out and slaughter YOUR enemies, is to ruthlessly whip them into line. Walker is already behaving that way, hence he’s the one I’d least like to see as President. Worse than Bush, worse than Trump. I think the Koch powerbloc is worse than Trump’s ego run.
Chris
@Applejinx:
Also –
Like I said way back upthread, Walker’s shtick is union-busting, specifically.
That lines up with the Kochs’ interests. These guys are first and foremost economic royalists. They don’t care so much about the racist or neocon or other aspects of the Republican platform. So that alone might be enough to explain why Walker caught their eye, rather than some other guy with other priorities less aligned with their own.
Ruckus
@sharl:
In my experience people who actually sign checks actually want some results for their money. Sure the goal could be to just aggravate lefty bloggers, but if all that is happening is they are paying someone to be ignored at some point that money dries up. If this moron is here just for the duration of one of the idiot runs and isn’t getting any more traction than the candidate why pay bad money after bad?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Mike in NC:
I get that. It’s just that I thought they were practical enough to know that those guys, however much they like to play with snakes, they’re right on board with the low taxes and regulation shit that the Kochs like, too, and even better, if you can get the pinhead base voters thinking [sic] hard enough about the snake handling, they’re even more likely to go along with the economic shit that kills them.
Ruckus
@Applejinx:
It is worse than the others precisely for the reasons you listed. They are first class assholes, the kind that give other rich assholes a bad name. The Duke brothers in Trading Places were absolute saints compared to the koch brothers.
sharl
@Ruckus: All that is true, but people with connections to those who write the laws – especially those concerning tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations – don’t have to follow the same economic rules as you and me. In fact – assuming my unpleasant theory is correct – someone on the GOP’s finance/budget team has probably green-lighted this (perhaps accompanied by a private eye-roll), either as just the cost of doing business (i.e., cost charged to overhead to placate a party exec) or as having a favorable ROI (e.g., if its related to a major donor). In any event, I doubt they’re paying much anyway, especially if the troll is living with its parents or whatever.
WaterGirl
@Germy Shoemangler: Thanks for asking!
His driveway is now almost wide enough to land a plane on, and it’s crazy tall. The part that is just inches from the my fence is every bit as tall and ugly as I feared it would be. And he has had it trashed with bricks and lumber and debris since the day they started work on it. And he has his big trailer parked maybe a foot from the corner of my garden. All I can say is what an asshole.
I planted a tall ornamental grass in the corner of my garden area that should help block the trailer, starting next year. I also planted cosmos (flowers that grow very tall) across the next two sections of my fence. None of that will help me in the wintertime, but at least it will help during the summer months. The next panel is blocked by the trellis for my climatis, but there wasn’t much I could do for the remaining fence panels. Though I did put up a hummingbird feeder on one of those, so when I look out, that’s what I look at, and the hummingbirds make me happy. :-)
Ruckus
@sharl:
I use the pie filter, keeps my sanity and blood pressure closer to normal. But the pie filter is pretty much wasted when so many quote and reply to the trolls. I get some who want to fuck with the trolls but for me I don’t see the fun they claim to have. And as you pointed out I don’t see idiots and morons changing their tiny minds, especially if they are getting paid. So even if it is just pennies I’m not interested in giving them any cause to justify continuing to pay idiots and morons to annoy me. I boycott stores and companies that try to rip me off or who I know support asshole politicians, etc. No reason not to do the same for trolls.
WaterGirl
@Germy Shoemangler: Pretty soon candidates won’t just have to wear flag pins; they will have to have visible meters so we can view their testosterone levels. I shudder to think where we go after that – no shirts so we can count chest hairs?
sharl
@Applejinx: Any discussion of Scott Walker’s links to the Koch brothers should include the account of Walker being totally punked by the Buffalo Beast guy, who impersonated David Koch in a Feb. 2011 phone conversation with Gov. Doofus and recorded it all. If, after taking that in, a person isn’t convinced that the Koch’s own Doofus lock, stock, & barrel, nothing will convince them!
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
The very idea you just imagined, we shouldn’t mention this in public, it may be picked up by some paid moron and passed along as a positive suggestion to piss us off.
Interesting suggestion on the testosterone though, where do you think Carly might rate?
Did I just go too far?
SFAW
@Right to Rise:
Bush lost twice, but as with everything Affirmative Action for the Privileged, he had friends in high places to bail him out. Story of his life, not that you’d be able to figure that out.
You’re a loser, whistling past the graveyard.
Boo!
(I hope I didn’t make you shit your pants. Again.)
SFAW
@Right to Rise:
That’s the best you got? And it’s wrong, too.
Bush did not win twice – he was appointed once, and Ken Blackwell cooked the books (figuratively speaking) for the other.
Keeping telling yourself he won, moron.
Boogity-boogity-boo!
Shit your pants again?
Frank Bolton
@Ruckus: At the Presidential level? Kasich is probably the least dangerous. His floor is undoubtedly higher than Cruz/Bush/Walker/Rubio/Trump, but his ceiling is below the level he needs to win.
The GOP has a dual mandate for 2016. If they can’t do this then they can’t win short of the Obama Presidency suddenly imploding.
1.) They have to continue to drive white turnout. Unfortunately for them (but fortunately for America), they’ve been fucking this up. Yes, Romney got an almost unprecedented number of white votes. However, that was being driven solely by votes in the South and Appalachia, places where they bottom out as ‘likely Republican’. Moreover, the white turnout vote has also been nationally dropping except for the South. Look at states, especially in the Midwest and Northeast, such as Iowa and New York and New Hampshire. The white vote in both categories keeps going down. States where the GOP should be at least a little competitive like Pennsylvania and Minnesota are all but impossible for them to win with their current demographic appeal.
The GOP can’t afford another 1.5-2% drop in white turnout simultaneous with Millenials + Asians + Latinos voting in larger proportion. Not only does this make winning the Presidency impossible but there’s a real danger of them losing the House.
2.) They have to do better with racial minorities. This is the one that gets a lot more attention than the GOP’s non-Southern white problem. And it gets it because it’s a lot more intuitive and existential. No one really has a good explanation as to why the GOP is slipping with non-Southern white voters in Presidential years, but everyone knows why they’ve been sucking here: it’s because the Southern Strategy is starting to really bite them in the ass.
The GOP has to do better with racial minorities, especially but not exclusively Latinos — if they were able to get the black vote down to a ‘mere’ 65-70% against, Virginia and Pennsylvania would be a lot more doable and they wouldn’t be in such existential trouble. And of course it’d delay losing Texas by another 4 years. Unfortunately for them, while Romney/McCain-style blew on the dog whistles more softly than Trump is blowing, they’re still heard loud and clear. Romney got like 27% of the Latino vote, 23% of the Asian vote, and <5% of the black vote.
And I don't see any evidence that Kasich will do better than Romney, let alone McCain. Remember, even though Romney was on the surface a lot more reasonable than most of the 2012 Republican clown car, he still lost.
Basically, the only GOP candidate that scares me a bit is Trump. And it's not that I have any hard evidence that he'll do well or poorly, it's that there isn't much contemporary evidence for how a Trump-style campaign performs at all. Nixon-Reagan style candidates, a category to which Kasich, Bush, and Rubio firmly belong, have a wealth of empirical evidence to their performance.
SFAW
@Right to Rise:
Wow, an anti-Semite, too!
Although, not surprising.
rikyrah
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
They think that they can spend money on anyone and sell them. They really do.
rikyrah
@Frank Bolton:
There is a higher proportion of immigrants in the ASIAN community, than the Latino community. And, to think that they don’t hear the anti-immigrant dogwhistles, is ridiculous. I will forever believe that the number that shocked the hell out of the MSM about 2012 is the percentage of Asians that voted for President Obama. It was a higher percentage than Latinos.
When everyone who is non-White is telling you to go phuck yourself, there is a problem. They thought they could just poo-poo it away on Black people, but when Latinos and Asians and Native Americans all vote the same way – there is a problem with a certain political party.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris:
The Kochs are Birchers. They are loons. They are greedy second, or possibly third. Their platform when they ran for themselves wasn’t ‘Lower our taxes and deregulate us big businesses’, it was ‘destroy the entire government, especially anything that benefits minorities.’ Koch money funded the Tea Party movement. The candidates they paid for are not pro-business, they’re pro-destroy-everything. Walker, The Corrupt Businessman’s Friend, is the exception and not the rule. Like a lot of Libertarians, they say they’re socially liberal, but they back Christianist conservative assholes by preference.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
It’s only a problem until they get the voting laws changed. When that happens — problem solved!
Doug!
@PIGL:
Thank you.
Steeplejack
@sharl:
At least by ignoring it the number of pointless comments is reduced.
WaterGirl
@Ruckus: Shall I request deletion for my comment?
Did you just go too far? That’s a definite no! I don’t know where iCarly rates on the testosterone meter, but I would like to see a meter that shows the level of sociopathy in each candidate.
Cervantes
@Chris:
Living in a closed environment can be deceptively comfortable — but it can also be not too healthy.
Maybe that’s a reason.
mclaren
@WaterGirl:
Biting the heads off live chickens on stage.
The Republican party has now become the party of the circus geek.
Steeplejack
@sharl:
I think it’s much simpler and less sinister: it’s just the troll’s perverse hobby. “I get on that blog and wind up those lefties. It’s so easy! Ha-ha!” There is no rhyme or reason to the troll’s (often contradictory) posts. It’s not even saying what pisses off liberals, updated daily; it’s saying what pisses off liberal blog commenters in the current thread, updated every few minutes.
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
If you could control it at all, which you can’t, I would say plant some bamboo in that corner next to his trailer and point it in that direction.
SFAW
@Steeplejack:
Cleek’s Law adapted for the higher-bandwidth world?
(Well, “higher-bandwidth” until the telecoms or cable companies or whoever get Net Neutrality killed, that is.)
Ruckus
@Frank Bolton:
I also think that T Rump is the most dangerous and while any of the group would be a complete disaster if they managed to be elected, Kasich has a not so crazy sheen about him. It is of course not true, he is major loony, he just doesn’t present that way. And that might get him votes in a general that would stay away from the more obviously loony.
I think we have to throw away almost all the concepts about running for president that we’ve had for the last 60 or so yrs. These 15 are fucking crazy and they have crazy people ready to vote for them primarily because they are crazy. They have been trained crazy, as has been discussed here many times, since Nixon. This election is the confluence of that and the rules/structure really don’t apply anymore. That’s one reason T Rump is leading. A complete egomaniac, with no real interest in actual governing can talk crazy and enough people fall in line, like following the pied piper.
Jake the anti so shul soshulist
@Right to Rise:
Working class white men do that temselves without any help.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: If I were to go all evil on him, I would do worse than bamboo. I wouldn’t do that, of course, but I may have to strongly consider the daydreaming aspect of revenge.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
Fortunately it’s too late for that now.
Do we really need meters to see their level of sociopathy? Seems to be pretty much out in the open to me. Maybe that’s why I think Kasich may be a bit of a threat, his seems to be better hidden at a glance. The rest? Not hidden at all.
gorram
@Right to Rise: I demand payment for having to read something this exhausting.
sharl
@Steeplejack: You’re probably right; in other words:
*(Source uncertain, but discussed here and elsewhere.)
Steeplejack
@SFAW:
Cleek’s Law with a higher refresh rate.
Cervantes
@Steeplejack:
Verily, in the annals of outrage, Road to Ruin (or whatever its name is) is a mere piker.
SFAW
@Steeplejack:
Yeah, you’re right.
Technology, how do that work?
SFAW
@Cervantes:
If you’re trying to say he’s a rank amateur, “piker” is not the proper word.
I used to use it that way, until — not that long ago — I discovered I was wrong (Horrors!).
redshirt
Hurf Durf I haven’t read the thread but let me put this troll in his place!
Firstly….
Steeplejack
@redshirt:
You’re off to a great start!
Timurid
@trollhattan:
You mean that you’ll have what he’s smoking.
And you’d better be careful with that stuff if you don’t want to end up chewing somebody’s face off under an overpass…
Tim C.
@Ruckus: Essentially this. We are at the head of a long chain of trends that have been building since the 90s, who know what the hell happens next. Money is useless without Charisma and this is way different than Guillani in 07 when he was leading by name recognition only. Likewise, Mitt was the single establishment candidate against people who were head-trauma crazy. Bush though is looking more and more like Phil Gramm in 96. Lots of establishment support, lots of money, looks like a safe bet to a lot of the ‘smart people’ … and then nada once the campaign starts.
J R in WV
@Right to Rise:
I’ve used contractors in government work – they cost nearly twice as much as a regular employee does. We were offered an EPA contractor at $145/hour. I declined the EPA’s offer to fund that guy.
They came back with a lower offer, which we accepted – it wasn’t really a good deal, but I wanted to keep the flow of grants moving.
Whenever a private business enters a government-provided service, that business needs to make a significant profit while doing the work, a profit that the government didn’t have to make. In my state, the maintenance of guardrails on highways has been contracted out. The politician can say “I’ve cut state workers by 400 staffers!!”
But they’ve increased the cost of guardrails by the profit margin that private company needs to make. Because private contractors don’t pay less than government pays employees. I’ve always made more working for private companies than when working for government.
Prisons are being run by for-profit companies. They cut costs by feeding people crap my farmer neighbors wouldn’t feed to their pigs. They don’t turn on the heat in winter because that costs money. They don’t provide real health care, even a nurse costs money. If you get sick, your 18 month sentence just turned into a death penalty.
That’s just so stupid! Contract a local pharmacist to teach H S chemistry? Do you know what pharmacists make an hour? Like 4 times as much as a teacher! Your idea would bankrupt any school trying to teach chemistry. Just so stupid.
Tim C.
@J R in WV: Yes, but you see Teachers are evil, particularly the ones you don’t know in places you’ve never lived. So when we find ways to hurt them by making hand-wavey gestures that vaguely sound like an MBA maximizing short term gains at the expense of long-term profitability we can pretend it’s “common sense”
Cervantes
@SFAW:
piker slang (orig. U.S.).
A cautious or timid gambler who makes only small bets; a person who takes no chances; a ‘poor sport’ or ‘poor thing’; a shirker; a lounger; a person who speculates in stocks, esp. with only small sums.
Such is life.
Chris
@Cervantes:
Jesus. Having decent troll control is not “living in a closed environment.” Most of the people on this website have said things I disagree with at some point or other, including yourself. Loud and angry disagreements are a common occurrence in this place. That doesn’t mean you’re required to allow every asshole with an Internet connection to derail every two or three threads with encyclopedia-length screeds about their pet topics, or with shorter outbursts of “my candidate’s poop doesn’t smell! And he’s gonna win! SUCK! ON! IT!”
boatboy_srq
@Patrick: I recall the public statements about “patriotism”: short answer – go shopping. No mention of sacrifice, no costs, nothing except Feed The Free Market Monster. Ugh.
henqiguai
@Steeplejack (@321):
Sure you can; (1) place hard barriers lower than the root system can penetrate; (2) plant the clumping varieties. Check with your preferred bamboo provider.
J R in WV
@Right to Rise:
You said:
And that is true. Since it is the fact, that’s all we need. Stupid AND evil, that’s you! And the rest of your little cult, too!
Cervantes
@Chris:
If the people you call “trolls” are, in fact, allowed to persist here, I was merely speculating as to why that might be.
And I’m not sure they’re positively allowed; their not being disappeared may be something more akin to neglect (from your perspective).
And as for my own view: they don’t much bother me. Comments — by anyone — are easy enough to ignore. I am, it’s true, more bothered by heavy-handed measures that silence people. That’s just me.
Anyway, as I am sure you are aware, I appreciate all your comments. Have a great evening.
Chris
@Cervantes:
LMAO! Thank you. A good evening to you too.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Right to Rise:
Worked pretty well for presidents McCain and Romney.
Central Planning
@Right to Rise:
What an asshole.
Just One More Canuck
@Chris: That and Frau Linkmeyer
SFAW
@Cervantes:
Yes, I know the definition. It hardly fits RtR in the context of your comment (“Verily, in the annals of outrage, Road to Ruin (or whatever its name is) is a mere piker.”), hence my comment.
The general sense for the various definitions — and there are more than one, and they differ to some extent from the OED — is someone who is cheap, a tightwad, or similar, not someone who is a pale imitation of the “real” trolls.
Or are trolls now viewed as “gamblers”?
PIGL
@VidaLoca: thank you for your thoughtful and informative reply to my drive-by comment.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Ruckus: Kasich is too much like the rest to have any chance if people turn out to vote.
KASICH: Well, look, I love Huckabee, I mean, he’s a good guy .
Huckabee is not a “good guy”. See – mic.com/articles/117416/5-quotes-show-why-mike-huckabee-is-2016-s-most-dangerous-candidate – for an example. Kasich “loving” Huckabee isn’t something he should be doing if he wants to appeal to reasonable people.
That’s just one example. He thinks he’s above answering questions, also too.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who hates being limited to 3 linkies…)
Ken
@Debbie: Yeah, saying that Jeb! will beat Trump because of money is, well, precious. When they were gutting the campaign finance laws, I don’t think the Republicans considered what would happen if a crazy billionaire decided to run himself, instead of just cutting checks to one of the establishment types.
SFAW
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
This would be true, in a world with a rational electorate. However, in the current USofA, stuff like this only matters to those of us who follow politics assiduously.
Ruckus
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Not saying I like him in any way shape or form but you have to put yourself a crazy place, like someone who would vote for any of the 15. Looking at them from our perspective gets you nowhere. You are too sane to make the kind of irrational decision necessary. Which is of course the only way you could chose or vote for any of them
PIGL
@Right to Rise: he got you into a war in Iraq which you catastrophically lost? So what was your point?
Tim C.
@Ken: Not just that, the GOP didn’t realize there are in fact dozens of plutocrats capable of financing their own hobby candidate, no matter how looneytoons. This has the effect of filling the media markets to the point of total saturation which then even further diminishes the power of the money they just spent.
Damn… didn’t expect things to turn out like that, but we are blessed with confused opposition.
SFAW
@Tim C.:
That’s today. Maybe.
Things will be somewhat different a year from now. And not in a good way, I think.
rk
@Right to Rise:
I’m trying to figure out if you’re a troll or a moron. Probably both.
sharl
@rk: Eh, troll-or-moron, beats me; could be both. But in my exchange with Steeplejack upthread, one thing I forgot then was that RtR (and its previous manifestations) seems to show up fairly reliably whenever election seasons start to heat up. At least that has been my general impression, I mean, I haven’t been doing stats and spreadsheets on that doof’s appearances here, so I can’t prove that, but pretty sure that’s the case.
That would be totally consistent with a someone paid to troll for right-wing interests. Alternatively the troll is far more self-disciplined than its typed-in ascii diarrhea would suggest.
Having said all that, I still suspect Steeplejack is correct: there are lots of politically passionate left-of-center folks here, and if you like to get such people riled up – pay or no pay – doing it during political season would presumably enhance the experience, I guess.
TriassicSands
They all frighten me. Walker has always seemed so obviously dumb that I’ve never been able to believe his success. While it’s great to see him fail, the cretin who fills his shoes is potentially more dangerous.
My sister lives in Wisconsin. The other day I sent her an email: “What’s the Matter with Wisconsin?”
Walker has been such an abject failure outside of Wisconsin, how the hell did he seduce all those Cheeseheads?
feebog
@Ruckus:
Late to the party, but the thread has been, well, long. I don’t agree that all 15 of these candidates are crazy. Christie is a corrupt bully, but not crazy. He will take any position on a given issue, depending on how the wind blows. Lindsey Graham is not crazy. He has some horrific foreign policy positions, but is basically a neo-con with a sense of humor. Gilmore and Pataki? Both probably not crazy, no doubt that is why they can’t get traction. The rest? Rubio is dumb, not crazy. Trump, Carson, Fiorina, Huckabee, all crazy. Cruz is evil and crazy. Paul, dumb and crazy. Ditto Jindal. Ditto Jeb!. Walker is the only one who fits the trifecta, dumb, crazy and evil.
Chris T.
@SFAW:
Surgeons, neuro or not—and I’m speaking generally here, not specifically of R candidate surgeons, although it might well apply anyway—do not have to be smart. They have to be skilled. That particular skill is similar to some kinds of artistic skills, of holding an instrument while touching nothing but air, and controlling that instrument in very fine motor skill movements. They need to be able to do this all in three dimensions, under time pressure.
Cervantes
@SFAW:
You seem invested in this bit of slang! Not necessarily a bad thing, of course, so here’s a response.
Well, by your own account, you knew that you knew it, then you knew that you hadn’t known it, and now once again you know that you know it.
Just meant he’s not much of an outrage; an annoyance at worst.
That may be the general sense you infer. I see the word differently: a pathetic figure, a naïf, someone immature, someone who doesn’t or can’t pull their weight, someone who’s in over their head.
Someone who may be trying to be outrageous but isn’t really able.
Well, Road to Ruin (if that’s what its name is) is definitely someone who brings very little to the table!
sharl
@Chris T.: I was just wondering if the Salem Hypothesis (also, this related rationalwiki entry) might apply not only to engineers, but technically skilled but not-very-creative medical specialists* as well, such as maybe Dr. Carson (*and similarly inclined technologists in any hands-on profession, maybe?).
It’s noted at those links that the Salem Hypothesis itself is not a proven thing (I suppose it would cease to be a hypothesis in that case…). But there seem to be so many cases where it applies that I gotta believe there is something to it.
Ruckus
@feebog:
I do not stand corrected. The 15 are crazy. They want to do things to people that are crazy. They want to do so either because they can get paid to or because they believe in the same idiotic ideals that have proven to be false in this experiment we live in. All of them are willing to be horrible people, want to be horrible people, want to fuck over millions of people for a little power. T Rump wants a job which pays in a year about what he makes in a day. He already has a 747 and can easily afford to purchase another. Christie is a selfish blow hard bully who gives not two shits about anyone but himself. I could go on but these are not normal people. They are fucking crazy and they are willing to pander to and be elected by crazy people. I’ve seen clinically crazy people up close and I’ve counseled them one on one. I have a modicum of understanding of crazy.
SFAW
@Cervantes:
That’s nice.
Some people see the word “bemused” as meaning “amused.” Some people think “irregardless” is a word. Some people may think that “The sky was yellow and the sun was blue” is an accurate statement of meteorological conditions on Planet Earth.
They are wrong, as are you. Doesn’t make you a bad person, of course. Just wrong.
Perhaps someday they – and you – would be right.After all, meanings can change over the years. (For example, the word “sketchy,” as commonly used today, has a somewhat different meaning from how it was used about 15 years ago.) But not today.
ETA: A word whose meaning might fit RtR better would be “amateur” or “tyro” or “failure.”
SFAW
@Ruckus:
Not even Bruuuuuce?
Which is why you come here? You miss it? (Sorry, I know I probably shouldn’t joke about stuff like that.)
SFAW
@sharl:
I’ve experienced something a little different re: engineers. As a parallel to my earlier comment (re: guy’s a top flight neurosurgeon, so he thinks he’s an expert in a bunch of other fields), I have found that engineers often behave as though they are as good at everything else as they are at engineering.
While this may be true for mechanical engineers, I have found software engineers – or, as we used to call them, “keypunchers” or “programmers” – to be, shall we say, less prone to having expertise in any area requiring any understanding of reality.
Incoming!
Original Lee
@David Koch: On the positive side, he didn’t try to say Obama was Muslim. I hope this sinks him anyway, but I doubt it.
SFAW
@Original Lee:
Yet.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Which is why you come here? You miss it? (Sorry, I know I probably shouldn’t joke about stuff like that.)
If we took better care of our citizens by including everyone with proper medical care, including vision, dental, and mental think how much less crap we’d have. Think how much better many, many peoples lives would be.
At this point 40 plus yrs of ignoring everyone who isn’t working as being worthless we’ve come to the point that many families have to have 2 incomes to survive and not at upper middle class levels. As you may notice I’m including other failures into the mental health issue because I see them all as part of the big picture. So what else is there to do but laugh about it? Elect better politicians? OK that might help, if we could find them. I think we are going to have to finish this downward spiral we’ve been on for 60 yrs by completely crash landing before it can be turned around. Those folks on the other side have completely given up on being better citizens or even good ones. Their leaders are only giving them that option and nothing we say or do will change that at this time. So I see a complete crash as the only way to change that direction.
So to laugh at it is the only way to keep one’s sanity.