Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

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

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Republicans in disarray!

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Everybody saw this coming.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Bark louder, little dog.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / Friday Evening Open Thread: More Repubs in Disarray!

Friday Evening Open Thread: More Repubs in Disarray!

by | 197 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

Truly, the GOP establishment candidates will sink to any depths in order to clear the lane for their guy. Holding a campaign event outside the other man’s campaign office? One presses back of hand to forehead, and prepares to swoon (as soon as the fainting couch is more conveniently arranged).

Apart from mocking the Repubs (just like every night, Pinky!) what’s on the agenda as we start the weekend?

Reader Interactions

197Comments

  2. 2.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    There is an intense Kasich/Bush supporter battle going on outside Bush headquarters

    the mice that roared?

  3. 3.

    Groucho48

    The fight started when Jeb! supporters took umbrage at the Kasich supporters chanting…We’re number 5! We’re number 5!

  4. 4.

    David *Rafael* Koch

    I think the Simon & Garfunkel ad Sanders ran really hurt him.

    I mean he was leading up to that point and then things turned south, quickly.

    When I saw the ad, I thought, “my gawd, this ad is whiter than the Oscars”. And you saw the backlash that generated.

    Maybe at long last, we can finally put the 60s to rest.

  6. 6.

    Germy

    After 20 of her emails were marked “Classified” and withheld from public release, Hillary released a statement calling the decision “overclassification run amok” and requesting that they be released in full to the public.

  7. 7.

    Germy

    Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, a staunch opponent of abortion, made at least $83,000 serving on the board of directors of Merck & Co. at a time when the pharmaceutical company was producing vaccines using fetal stem cell lines derived from aborted fetuses, according to corporate documents reviewed by Al Jazeera America. The program “Inside Story” with Ray Suarez also obtained documents indicating that during Fiorina’s tenure on the board, anti-abortion groups had asked Merck to stop producing such vaccines, and that the company had refused.

  8. 8.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @Germy:

    I am SHOCKED SHOCKED I tell you that one of the repug candidates is a f*cking hypocrite when it comes to making money, no wait….

  10. 10.

    Baud

    My closing ad to Iowans. I think this will turn the primary around.

    Who can turn the world on with his smile?
    Who can take a shitty job, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
    Well it’s you Baud! and we all know it
    With each glance and every little movement you show it

    Let’s all vote for Baud!, let’s make him our Prez
    Yes, my name is Baud!, and I approve this message
    We’re gonna vote Baud! after all
    One more time, Mr. Grant, America!
    We’re gonna vote Baud! after all

  14. 14.

    Baud

    @Germy: Gotta save something for New Hampshire. “I Fought the Law” seems more appropriate for the Live Free or Die state.

    And Oregon.

  15. 15.

    jl

    @Germy: As a Sanders mega-donor, I must take the high road and show chivalry wrt to the (so far) HRC total BS email security non-scandal ‘scandal’.

    So far, the investigation has only concerned what the classification should be now. It does not concern what was, or should have been, or anyone should reasonably have known what was, classified when HRC received, sent or stored the relevant items on her computers. Determining that will be, or maybe is, an entirely separate investigation.

    And having worked in the bizarre world of US, and NATO, security classification, it just may be that some bureaucrat is wildly reclassifying everything imaginable, and upgrading, and whatever it takes, to avoid problems with GOP hacks and hatchet men (Edit: and women).

    HRC may have a point. And as I pointed out in previous thread, I have heard and read in the news that some of the items contain public domain information that is also classified. So, that stuff is squarely in the weirdo house of mirrors world of US security classification.

  17. 17.

    Germy

    @Baud: See the youtube clip for the dancers in the background. We can use choreography like that for the musical version: BAUD!

  19. 19.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    @jl: Come now, you’re better than that.

    I happen to have a lot of respect and think highly of your usual analysis.

  23. 23.

    Baud

    @Germy: As soon as I made the quip about Oregon, I realized that I’m disappointed that no enterprising young tech person used that song to create a mashup of the events at Malheur.

  24. 24.

    jl

    @Baud:

    ” Polls seem bunker than usual this year. There have been 25 point swings from poll to poll. ”

    I agree. That is why I know the Baud! “We have to Nov to mess this up”! 2016! campaign! will win! even with a perfect record of zero percent so far!

  26. 26.

    FlipYrWhig

    @jl: I still don’t even know what that scandal is supposed to be exactly. Is it that Hillary Clinton had stuff on her computer that nefarious foreign hackers _could have_ stolen because it wasn’t properly secured? Or is it supposed to be that Hillary Clinton is taking top secret intelligence and using it privately for God knows what? Or something else?

  27. 27.

    Mnemosyne

    We checked into our hotel at Disneyland and got a free upgrade to a suite. It’s overkill for a one-night stay, but we sure as hell didn’t turn it down. Next up, dinner at the Blue Bayou and then fireworks.

  32. 32.

    jl

    @FlipYrWhig: HRC is evil, wicked, no good, bad, arrogant, worse than Obama, dishonest, pure evil, and that is the explanation for everything she does. Including farting in anyone’s general direction.

  34. 34.

    Tommy

    @jl:

    So far, the investigation has only concerned what the classification should be now. It does not concern what was, or should have been, or anyone should reasonably have known what was, classified when HRC received, sent or stored the relevant items on her computers.

    Exactly. I won’t ever be confused as a huge fan of Hillary but facts are facts. Best I can tell anything she received or sent have be retroactively classified. Which then begs a basic question from me I’ve never seen addressed, how is this even possible? How does something get retroactively classified?

  37. 37.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @FlipYrWhig:

    I still don’t even know what that scandal is supposed to be exactly. Is it that Hillary Clinton had stuff on her computer that nefarious foreign hackers _could have_ stolen because it wasn’t properly secured? Or is it supposed to be that Hillary Clinton is taking top secret intelligence and using it privately for God knows what? Or something else?

    The scandal is that she’s careless with America’s security. She’s already admitted, after much back and forth and stonewalling that she made a mistake. Now the endgame is to show just how bad that mistake was and why she was stonewalling in the first place.

  40. 40.

    jl

    @Enhanced Voting Techinques: Damn straight. Baud understands statistics and is saving up all the +s for election day. Cruz stole the brilliant. ‘We win, they lose’ plan from Baud, but it won’t do him any good.

    @Baud:
    I wondered that as well. Do they not know John Kasich is running? Are all the GOP primary voters that low info this year? Baud! supporters would be so drunk and stoned, they would have come up with more creative signs that would produce general hilarity, rather than mere puzzlement, which is a strength of that campaign, fer sher.

  43. 43.

    Phylllis

    @jl: James Goodale*, in his book Fighting for the Press, talks about this from firsthand experience when he was in the military. Everything in the stack would get hit with the ‘classified’ stamp, including already-published articles from the NY Times or other newspapers.

    *Lawyer for the Times during the Pentagon Papers case.

  44. 44.

    jl

    @Tommy:

    ” How does something get retroactively classified? ”

    Adam Silverman should put up a post that gives a concise guide to the weird and wacky world of national security classification.

    There are reasons, within reasons, within reasons, my friend. Be assured that is so.

  47. 47.

    Felonius Monk

    @Baud:

    Absent voter fraud, I think I’m a shoe in.

    I’ve heard rumors that down in Florida it will be Hanging Chads for Baud. At this point we are not yet sure which way the Fat Chads and the Pregnant Chads will go.

  50. 50.

    satby

    TGIF! I’m reminded this week since it was semester finals and the girls had 3 half days in a row that teenagers are a bizarre cross between toddlers and grumpy old people.

  51. 51.

    Mike J

    @Baud: You are getting a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFyy3XB_3Y4″> Hüsker Dü back together to do it, I hope.

  52. 52.

    Tommy

    @jl:

    There are reasons, within reasons, within reasons, my friend. Be assured that is so.

    I clearly assumed that was the case. I think out government classifies way to many documents. I think that is just a given. But if you do it retroactively how is somebody in government even supposed to know what is classified and what isn’t. Kind of course like a classic Catch 22.

  56. 56.

    jl

    @Felonius Monk: Baud chads will be called ‘chauds’.

    I got some cheetos coupons for that idea, the Baud! campaign having run out of small denomination, unmarked bills. Or, actually, coins, in this case.

  57. 57.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Raiders moving to Las Vegas?

    Oh, FSM let it be so. I love nothing more than kaos and drama.

  59. 59.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Just Some Fuckhead: I think what she admitted is that it was against the policy, hence wrong and distracting. But how is it “careless with America’s security”? Are we supposed to think “She had the stuff, probably to hide it and destroy evidence” or “She’s so lax with the stuff that someone even worse than her could get their hands on it”? ISTR that the original nudge-wink was that it had something to do with obscuring the Benghazi paper trail.

  61. 61.

    Iowa Old Lady

    Today I got a robocall, a volunteer at the door, and two mailings for Clinton, all of them telling me where and when to caucus, right down to the time I had to be in line in order to be allowed to participate.

  64. 64.

    jl

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:

    Or Lord. Raiduh Nation hits Vegas!?. They won’t last long after half a dozen caravans to those games.

    Does the NFL have a policy for rescuing a team whose fan base destroys itself through excessive party hardy?

    This is obviously an NFL plot to destroy the Raiduhs.

    Edit: I forgot, what will happen to the ticket money. Raiduhs better get a long term financing program for seat licenses and ticket sales before its fans bankrupt themselves at the slots. They’ll do that quicker than destroying themselves.

  67. 67.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Baud:

    Absent–voter fraud

    That’s a new one on me. Or is that like dead people voting?

    ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  69. 69.

    Tommy

    @Baud: If they legally could maybe :). I think Clinton, or if not Clinton then her staff, is very worried about Iowa. I hear Hillary already has a good ground game in Iowa and I don’t doubt it. But I bet over the last month or so she has done everything possible to ramp it up even more.

  70. 70.

    FlipYrWhig

    @FlipYrWhig: Wait, I left out the other meta-story, which always seemed to be the biggest part of it: the implication that Hillary is arrogant and doesn’t think petty rules apply to her. But that’s not about national security.

  73. 73.

    ? Martin

    @David *Rafael* Koch: Polls mean nothing in Iowa. Caucuses are low-turnout fluid events. My mom has blocked off 4 hours for the caucus. Not many voters are willing or able to commit to that kind of time.

  75. 75.

    ? Martin

    @Iowa Old Lady: My mom got a notice that her caucus location would probably change over the weekend for a larger space. She’s pretty sure the GOP is totally flying by the seat of their pants at this point and that the caucus will be a complete clusterfuck.

  76. 76.

    jl

    Back to the topic of this post. I think, if the GOP primary keeps wending on its crazy way, the media will say that the Democrats are in more disarray because they did not adequately plan for the extent of GOP disarray. And of course, the Democratic second-order disarray is worse, because, how could it not be?

  77. 77.

    Baud

    @FlipYrWhig:

    For me, it’s like if Clinton got a speeding ticket and we had a congressional investigation about whether she was a threat to public safety.

  78. 78.

    Tommy

    @? Martin: Stupid question because I don’t know, and not sure how I don’t know this. Do the Republicans and Democrats caucus in the same location at the same time?

  80. 80.

    bystander

    @Baud: @Germy:

    @jl: Could the “Run, John, Run!” signs mean “Leave the campaign and go away?”

    I think it means, “Hillary is in NH and she’s got her Vince Foster watermelon gun.”

    Also, too, Baud, good idea about the stand-in. Just make sure he doesn’t wear a hair piece. They can ruin the arc of the hat toss.

  81. 81.

    Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class

    I just got a HuffPo breaking banner and ding:

    CAPITULATION: GOP Insiders Warming to Trump

    Cruz has been fatally wounded. The stupid fuck may as well resign the Senate, too. Now he’s just a vote, nothing more.

  82. 82.

    Tommy

    @Baud: Yes. Having her “official” email server not at a government location was maybe not a smart decision, although I can see some reasons for doing it. Now it has become a witch hunt like White Water, the White House mailing list, Vince Foster, and all the other stuff we had to endure in the 90s.

  83. 83.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Tommy: In 2008, some of the Ds and Rs were in different parts of the same middle school. We didn’t even see one another. This year, they’re scheduled for the middle school (though Martin says that might change, which is mind boggling) and we’re in the UAW hall.

    @? Martin: Does she stay for the part where issues are suggested for the platform? That takes forever.

  84. 84.

    ? Martin

    @Tommy:

    How does something get retroactively classified?

    You can’t properly classify it before it exists. I’m pretty sure everything in her email has a certain security level but based on the content could then be classified to a higher level. And its possible that even on first read it’s not deemed important until some later date some analyst realizes the impact of it, and then classifies it up. A lot of documents don’t get reviewed until there is an intent to share it, so this request for emails is almost certainly causing a classification review on documents for the first time.

    Hell, we have a whole program to go around and reclassify information that was declassified and put in the public domain.

  85. 85.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @FlipYrWhig: No, she said it was a mistake. She didn’t try to couch it in weasel language like you. And it was a mistake – a completely unforced mistake driven by her need for secrecy, followed by arrogant stonewalling, following by admitting it was a mistake. And now we can expect many, many months (years?) of revelations about just how secretive, arrogant and mistake-prone she is.

    She has a long history of this.

    If that’s what Democrats want to settle for, so be it. I’ll vote for her if that’s the best we can do.

  86. 86.

    Stacy

    @satby: @satby: I’ve had mine home for 8 days due to Snowzilla 2016. Even the dog and cat look at me like “Seriously, they’re still here?” when the girls manage to stumble downstairs before lunch.

  87. 87.

    debbie

    @David *Rafael* Koch:

    Question: Christie, Rubio, Cruz, and maybe a few others have all said they would throw Hillary in jail on their first day in office. How do you think she should respond?

  88. 88.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    ‘The X-Files’ Return Nabs Blockbuster Ratings

    Fox’s revival of “The X-Files” has come crashing out of the gates with some big ratings. For its premiere Sunday night, it drew 16.2 million viewers.

    I thought Gillian Anderson was kidding when she said Obama would be making a cameo, but it was quite clever. Additionally it was tasty watching Mulder trash Fox News and BillO as part of the plot line.

  89. 89.

    Tommy

    @Iowa Old Lady: Thanks for the info. It makes sense to not have the two parties in the same room since a caucus is not like me walking into a voting booth. It would seem all the people in one room would be ripe for problems to arise that wouldn’t end well.

  90. 90.

    ? Martin

    @Tommy: No. In fact some years they don’t even caucus on the same day. The caucuses are run by the party and so they can pretty much do whatever they want. The GOP and Dem caucuses aren’t even run similarly. The Dem caucuses tend to be much more organic and interactive, the GOP ones more, well, authoritarian. My mom is expecting the GOP one to be a real shit-show with lots of yelling and hopefully a minimum of gunplay.

    She’s attended both over the years. I think she prefers the more orderly structure of the GOP one, but I think she feels the Dem one is more effective at getting citizens to participate. She always notes that the GOP doesn’t check ID for the caucus. Don’t want to discourage the right kind of people from participating, dontchaknow?

  91. 91.

    trollhattan

    Heh.

    Donald Trump’s decision to boycott Thursday night’s debate has officially paid off. While some speculated that the billionaire’s bizarre gamble would backfire, it is now clear that the odds of a Trump presidency have only improved over the past 24 hours.

    At 10:58 Thursday morning, Bill Kristol declared “Peak Trump” for the 11th* time this cycle.

  94. 94.

    Tommy

    @? Martin: Interesting. Very interesting. My father had a top secret security clearance and worked at high levels in the DoD. Most of not everything he wrote for the DoD, and that was kind of what he did, was classified. I only got into his office building once, for his retirement, and there were walk-in safes and armed guards everywhere. That is where I come at that issue from, so the retroactive thing doesn’t make that much sense to me even with your well thought out response.

  95. 95.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @jl:

    Baud! supporters would be so drunk and stoned

    I’m a Baud! supporter and I neither drunk or stoned(gave up those two vices 5 and 30 years ago respectively).

  96. 96.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    @debbie: She would go “Gone Girl” pull a knife from her boot and slash their throats.

    Hillary don’t play no fools.

    eta: Hillary is a lot like Snake Plissken

    Snake is shown as being very cynical, most likely due to the hypocrisy of the U.S. government, and appears to be willing to do anything to survive. He is terse, and stern in his speech, and holds nothing sacred or even important. He does, however, hold a loose code of honor. He frequently shows coolness, and levelheaded thinking under extremely stressful situations. Although he will kill without remorse, or hesitation, he does not kill for fun, or when it is unnecessary. He is also known for his quick wit and gallows humor.

  97. 97.

    ? Martin

    @Iowa Old Lady: Yeah, the GOP is trying to move to a larger gym. She’s packing her bleacher seats. She’s stunned that they are trying to move at this date. They lock the doors when it starts so anyone who went to the wrong place is almost certain to get locked out by the time they arrive at the correct place.

    She does stay through the whole thing. She was a state delegate in 2008. She’s retired, thought it would be interesting. It wasn’t really. She’s supporting Kasich and wondering how badly she’ll be be in the minority. She despises Trump.

    We had a long talk last night about the importance of unfavorability ratings in the general. She figured that the GOP had a shot this year because Trump was so popular and Obama so unpopular. I told her that Obama’s favorability was higher than anyone running in either party and that his favorability gap was 2nd only to Sanders, and that Trump is really popular with a few people, but his unfavorables are miles beyond anyone, and that Jebs are 2nd worse and worse than Hillary’s. Every GOP candidate is starting in a pretty deep hole. Apparently they don’t mention any of that on Fox. The notion that 90% of the country doesn’t hate Obama is quite a shock.

  98. 98.

    Tommy

    @? Martin: OK my gosh I learn something I should know everyday. So the caucus is run by the political party and not the state? Wow, that doesn’t seem like a good thing. But then again as we get near elections I see pics from like Cleveland with lines for blocks and I can vote faster than I can order a Big Mac in the drive thru. As I say over and over again I so wish the rest of the nation had what I have.

    Oh I should note I live in a town of 5,500 people and we have two voting stations, each staffed my eight people. One-half of the town goes to one the other to the second one.

  99. 99.

    Baud

    @? Martin:

    The notion that 90% of the country doesn’t hate Obama is quite a shock.

    I’m pretty sure at least 27% of the country hates Obama.

  100. 100.

    Doug R

    I heard a lot of the poll swinging is likely caucus goers vs supporters. Trumpet and Sanders supporters apparently haven’t gone to many caucuses in the past.

  103. 103.

    oldgold

    I have participated in 10 democratic caucuses in Iowa. They leave a great deal to be desired. I have many objections to this process. The primary one being that you have to declare your preference publicly.

  105. 105.

    ? Martin

    @Tommy: The classification system is only designed to control who gets to see what. That’s a fluid thing. You would expect some things to start highly classified and work down because they originate with very limited people (like plans in DOD, etc.), but State Department is a bit different in that so much of their information either flows from people outside of the US government or from lower-level employees in State. For them, you would expect a broader flow of information because thats how it originates – much of it can’t be contained at all because it started with someone not under US jurisdiction. So for them, I think it makes a lot more sense that you would classify things upward pretty frequently, and I think it makes sense that they would be constantly behind on classification review because State is a firehose of info.

    Remember, Chelsea Manning leaked State information and she at the time was pretty low-level. There was a pretty solid discussion at the time regarding the trade-off between overclassifying info and causing it to not reach the people that needed it and underclassifying it and exposing it to someone like Manning who might leak it. In the end, the sense is that we overclassify too much, and in doing so attribute too much value to the information. Most of what Manning leaked was mundane. Had it not been classified at all, nobody would have given a shit and the more important stuff could have been better protected simply by reducing it in volume, exposing it to fewer handlers.

  106. 106.

    Tommy

    @? Martin: Again I am leaning on you because clearly I didn’t understand caucuses as well as I thought. How can you change the location the week of? Is that legal, or because it is run by the parties and not the state, they can do whatever they want.

  108. 108.

    ? Martin

    @Tommy: Well, I live in a city of 250,000 and never had to wait in line to vote. But it’s a wealthy city so nobody has an incentive to fuck us over. I would say California is overall pretty good at making it easy to vote. I’ve never heard of long lines anywhere in the state.

  109. 109.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    Are you crying? Are you crying? ARE YOU CRYING?

    There’s no crying. There’s no crying in baseball!

    Rogers Hornsby was my manager and he called me a talking pile of pig shit and that was when my parents drove all the way down from Michigan to see me play the game and did I cry?! … No. No! And do you know why? Because there’s no crying in baseball. There’s no crying in baseball! No crying!

    dude, you lost get over it. have some dignity in defeat.

  110. 110.

    Tommy

    @David *Rafael* Koch: LOL. As a big fan of ladies I really hope no lady has to wear shoes like that. Not at some level I don’t find them a little sexy, but because they have to hurt to wear.

  112. 112.

    Eric S.

    @jl: Here in Chicago Baud! has a commanding lead already and we don’t even view until March (I think).

  113. 113.

    jl

    @oldgold:

    ” I have many objections to this process. The primary one being that you have to declare your preference publicly. ”

    Madison wrote some pieces on the pros and cons of different methods of casting a vote. He thought in some cases, a public vote was preferable, since it reduced chances of voter fraud due to ballot stuffing and false identity, but the con was that it made bribery easier, and probably more lucrative, since how the vote was cast could be verified.

    What we now call the Australian ballot was limited to big cities in the Mid-Atlantic region, IIRC.

    Anyway, public voice vote was the way Virginia gentlemen voted back in the day of the Founders and Framers, so you should be proud you have the chance.

  114. 114.

    Tommy

    @? Martin: Very cool to hear. But of course how easy it is for you and me to vote is not the same everywhere. That pains me. I might note we both live in blue states and maybe, just maybe this has something to do with our ease of voting. You know, just saying.

  115. 115.

    Baud

    @jl:

    I recall that George Will once wanted to do away with the secret ballot. I think he was concerned that people were surreptitiously voting contrary to the wishes of their church or employer.

  116. 116.

    dogwood

    It will be interesting to see if these Trump supporters actually turn out. Some journalist, might have been Pierce, reported that at a Trump rally he attended there were no campaign workers getting information from the Trumpeteers. Maybe these folks are really self-motivated. We’ll have to wait and see.

  119. 119.

    oldgold

    jl, No, inter-family, social and business pressure is a big problem.It impacts how people caucus and worse, it keeps many people away.

  120. 120.

    dogwood

    @Tommy:
    In ’08 my traditional caucus location was changed days before Super Tuesday because the party expected unprecedented turnout. I got several phone calls and emails from the Obama campaign reminding me. It was lucky they changed the site because the turnout was very high.

  125. 125.

    jl

    @oldgold: I was just reporting what Madison said, so you would have some pride in getting a chance to vote that way.

    Virginia gentlemen didn’t give a damn about social pressure, dammit.

  126. 126.

    jl

    @Baud: The proleptic imagination is the signal strength of the Baud campaign. You should sign him up. What’s the problem? Maybe he don’t drink enough to absorb the compensation. I dunno.

  127. 127.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @David *Rafael* Koch: Tad Devine worked for Lloyd Bentsen, Bob Kerrey, Al Gore and John Kerry. I wonder how long before we find out what outrage the Clintons perpetrated on him that was so foul he became a virgin again, then signed up as a Purity Warrior For Bernie.

    IOW: What job did he want and didn’t get?

  131. 131.

    Tommy

    Asked what we’d do tonight or had going on at the top of the thread. Been somewhat busy this week. Had the flu and didn’t want my cat in bed with me. Lot of work. Not given my “overlord” cat the attention she needs and it seems she will be on the arm of my chair for the next few hours moving my right hand off my mouse if she doesn’t get attention 24/7. Some scallops for dinner.

  133. 133.

    Eric S.

    @? Martin: I admit to not having given much thought to the classification process in the past. What you say about up classification and down classification makes sense to me. It gives me a perspective I didn’t have before. Thanks.

  134. 134.

    Calouste

    @trollhattan: Current odds at the UK bookies for the GOP candidate:

    Trump – evens
    Rubio – 11/4
    Cruz – 15/2
    Bush – 10/1
    Christie – 40/1
    Kasich – 50/1

    Everyone else 150/1 or worse

    Rubio was leading for quite a while at around 7/4, with Trump following at around 5/2, but in the last week and a half or so that has moved around significantly.

  138. 138.

    Calouste

    @Tommy:

    So the caucus is run by the political party and not the state? Wow, that doesn’t seem like a good thing.

    I think the only other countries where internal party elections are run by the state rather than the party are one-party states.

  139. 139.

    dogwood

    @Eric S.:
    I wonder how various voter and contributor lists get distributed through the the party. I doubt that the Obama people will give up their lists until a nominee has been decided upon. At that time I’ll probably get contacted by Clinton if she’s the nominee. Bernie and O’Malley must have received contact information from sources not aligned with Clinton since I’ve heard from them. Overall, the system is pretty haphazard.

  145. 145.

    Lord Baldrick

    Clinton:

    “We firmly oppose the complete blocking of the release of these emails. Since first providing her emails to the State Department more than one year ago, Hillary Clinton has urged that they be made available to the public. We feel no differently today.

    “After a process that has been dominated by bureaucratic infighting that has too often played out in public view, the loudest and leakiest participants in this interagency dispute have now prevailed in blocking any release of these emails. This flies in the face of the fact that these emails were unmarked at the time they were sent, and have been called ‘innocuous’ by certain intelligence officials. We understand that these emails were likely originated on the State Department’s unclassified system before they were ever shared with Secretary Clinton, and they have remained on the department’s unclassified system for years. And, in at least one case, the emails appear to involve information from a published news article.

    “This appears to be over-classification run amok. We will pursue all appropriate avenues to see that her emails are released in a manner consistent with her call last year.”

    Agree with Sanders and Clinton – email non-issue is not relevant to any issues. Forget it.

  146. 146.

    oldgold

    Old Iowa Lady, Yes, it is shocking. Even the ignoramuses who run the GOP in Iowa have enough civic sense to allow their caucus participants a secret ballot.

  147. 147.

    benw

    One Republican pollster says to the other: “Which array has all our data on likely Iowa voters?”

    The other Republican pollster points to the data and says: “Disarray.”

  148. 148.

    scav

    @benw: A) I can only assume that’s an 8-inch flying pizza they’re pointing to, and that’s for the men. All the women are in binders. B) I’m moreover not sure they can even organize themselves in a single array: disarray, datarray, everywhere a mantarray . . .

  149. 149.

    Randy P

    @Phylllis:

    James Goodale*, in his book Fighting for the Press, talks about this from firsthand experience when he was in the military. Everything in the stack would get hit with the ‘classified’ stamp, including already-published articles from the NY Times or other newspapers.

    Remember when everybody wanted to burn down the traitorous NY Times for revealing the existence of a “secret” W anti-terrorist program (something to do with tracking finances in banks, I forget the details) that had a very public website? And had been announced by the W administration via press release?

    They can get away with that stuff. They control the mob, and the mob doesn’t work with logic.

  152. 152.

    Germy

    Excellent comment from AMK over at LGM:

    Watching Trump take all these clowns for a ride has been hugely satisfying. He’s obviously gotten lucky at times, but there’s also a sort of animal cunning at play here that’s perversely entertaining. It’s like watching the Predator monster running circles around all those guys in the jungle, picking them off one-by-one, helpless and terrified by a power they cannot understand.

  154. 154.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I’ll be damned. The registered Iowa Republicans watching campaign commercials with an MSNBC reporter seem to like Hillary best– the woman says “Bernie at least shows you what it’s like to be a Socialist”, they don’t seem hostile. Republicans, they say, are just tearing each other apart and not talking about what they’d do. They do not commit to caucusing, much less voting, for anybody. But I’d bet ten bucks the wife at least goes for HRC.

    and I would’ve turned it off if my hands hadn’t been full.

  162. 162.

    The Other Chuck

    @Baud:

    someone stole it to set up a porn site

    That’s good, someone might have done something really obscene with it otherwise.

  164. 164.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: do you suspect a Hillbot or a BernieBro of this nefarious pernicity? or was it the foul turpitude of the…

    What do we call O’Mally supporters? MOMma’s Boys? Martingbats?

  175. 175.

    Germy

    autoplay ads on balloon-juice now?

    I heard a guy talking, so I increased the volume, scrolled up, and I see Jesse Ventura gibbering aggressively about something.

    WTF?

  181. 181.

    p.a.

    Patriot Group Issues ‘Call To Action’ To Air ‘Grievances’ At Oregon Refuge

    Little late for Festivus. Are they on the Julian calendar? Some sub-textual original constructionist reading of the Constitution on calendar dating?

  183. 183.

    Germy

    Fox News host Bill O’Reilly confirmed on Friday that his program has not offered Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign any attention, but insisted there was a good reason for doing so.

    “Honestly, we looked for a reason to put the senator on, but we couldn’t find any,” the Factor host said. “His poll numbers are very low. His campaign strategy is what it was four years ago. There is simply nothing new.”

    Santorum complained after a GOP debate on Thursday night that neither O’Reilly nor his colleague Megyn Kelly have invited him onto their programs despite announcing his candidacy last May.

    “They won’t put me on the show. And this is a guy that won the Iowa caucuses four years ago, and when you look at their biggest primetime shows, we haven’t had access to their shows,” Santorum told Breitbart News.

  184. 184.

    benw

    @Baud: how dare you suggest that I sully my porn site with a… a… presidential campaign. I have some standards, my friend.

  186. 186.

    Baud

    @benw:

    You’re absolutely correct. In these polarized times, I don’t want to be seen as the candidate that ruined the one thing that unites all Americans.

    Thank you for your integrity.

  188. 188.

    chrome agnomen

    @Germy: it’s partly animal cunning, but one can’t overlook the fact that none of the others is really very smart.

  189. 189.

    Germy

    Has Karl Rove hired a male escort to lob softball questions at the next Baud press conference?

  192. 192.

    Feathers

    Jeb! has been running specifically anti-Kasich ads on Boston TV. I don’t watch that much TV and I’ve seen several of them. I chalked it up to Jeb!’s consultants burning through his money, but maybe there was some sort of 11th dimension chess going on.

    The first episode of The X-Files did not have any campaign ads (or I missed them). Three in a row between the show and the news. By Monday night, there were plenty of campaign ads. The juxtaposition of Mulder ranting about lies and we’re all in danger and Chris Christie claiming he can keep us safe was slightly horrifying.

    Has anybody read something good on the oddness of The X-Files being a product of the Murdoch empire? I did a rewatch this past fall, and it kept jumping into my mind.

  195. 195.

    randy khan

    @Just Some Fuckhead: Of course, what she said about why it was a mistake was this:

    It was mistake, because who wants to put people through all of this? I don’t want to go through it, I don’t want to put a lot of my friends through it. So it was a mistake.

    Source

    As she and countless others have pointed out, what she did was essentially the same thing that her predecessors had done. She’s just been harassed about it because she’s HRC.

  196. 196.

    Applejinx

    Open thread! That’s a place where I can say (a) the death flu has mostly gone away now, and (b)…

    My video game is on Steam Greenlight! I made the youtube video and everything :D

    Counterpart, on Steam Greenlight

    Now is your chance to see if I mellow out and bern less brightly if I wasn’t starving! :D more seriously, I’ve been working super hard for weeks on this and it draws on all the stuff that I know about. Possibly I am better suited to making video games than to opining about political things (you tell me) (but it’s so much funnn!)

    I’m pretty sure saying ‘yeah, go ahead and put that on steam’ costs you nothing, and the eventual game will only be $10. I promise, if I make a big hit I will underwrite Baud’s campaign, and the next videogame will let you be Steve stalking John. What will get John first, Steve or the broom?

    whew, apologies, I’m a bit giddy, I think you can probably see in the submission how much work this has been…

  197. 197.

    Ken

    @? Martin:

    Hell, we have a whole program to go around and reclassify information that was declassified and put in the public domain.

    How does that work? How can it work, assuming you’re not sitting next to Winston Smith in Oceania’s Ministry of Truth?

Comments are closed.