Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

In after Baud. Damn.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

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

Let there be snark.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

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

Optimism opens the door to great things.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

It’s a doggy dog world.

Bark louder, little dog.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Everybody saw this coming.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson: the bland and smiling face of evil.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

People are complicated. Love is not.

No Justins, No Peace

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

You are here: Home / Open Threads / President Obama’s Presser (Open Thread)

President Obama’s Presser (Open Thread)

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PBO is giving a press conference now on a wide range of topics, including congressional Republicans’ refusal to do their jobs, whether Putin “bested” him in Syria, the 2016 race and his golf score (classified). His remarks on the SCOTUS seat were what you’d expect — he reviewed the history, etc., and basically called on the GOP congresscritters to do their goddamned jobs.

His take on whether Putin “outfoxed” him in Syria was interesting. He said Putin has assumed responsibility for a failed state and is spending billions, so he’s not sure that’s such a great prize.

On the Democratic race, he was mostly non-committal. He said he knows Hillary better and suspects her policies are closer to his own but admitted he hadn’t studied their positions all that closely. He said he thinks their values are similar and that it mostly comes down to tactics, but either candidate would be 100 times better than any of the Republicans. Yep.

On the GOP side, he said Trump gets most of the attention but that all of the candidates’ positions are anti-science, anti-immigration, etc. Shorter: they all suck. And Trump will never be president (PBO says he has faith in the American people).

I’m going to miss PBO.

Reader Interactions

145Comments

  2. 2.

    Tinare

    It is telling about what kind of person the President is that he does still have faith in the American people. I find it hard most days to be positive, and despite all the crap he’s really seen up close, he remains optomistic. That’s a good man right there.

  5. 5.

    dr. bloor

    I’m going to miss PBO.

    So will a lot of other people. Sadly, some of them won’t realize it until after the fact, and even more will never realize it.

  7. 7.

    Cacti

    Putin is all in on propping up the Assad dictatorship in Syria, while the Russian economy contracted 3.7% in 2015 and continues to contract with the falling price of oil.

    Shrewd.

  10. 10.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Baud:
    If Obama admitted to having Scalia assassinated, I would be on the phone to every congressperson I could find demanding they remove the ‘two terms as president’ restriction. That would be LEADERSHIP.

  11. 11.

    WarMunchkin

    I’m pretty sure he just said that presidential candidates need to be able to find leaders’ countries on a map. GG. <3 PBO

    And, as I said in the previous thread, these journalists ask questions that invite a smacking in the mouth. I have system shock. I have not watched a PBO presser in a long time.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    @Cacti: Yeah, my response would have been, “If you think Putin is so awesome, why don’t you try being a journalist in Russia?”

  13. 13.

    Batgirl

    MomSense was talking about a book in an earlier post about the different ways other countries achieve universal healthcare. Not sure if this is the title but The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper and Fairer Health Care by T. R. Reid does this.

  14. 14.

    Baud

    @Germy: They finally got rid of the patriarchial numbering system that sought to rank our comments by quality. We are all equal now.

  19. 19.

    Mnemosyne

    Newsflash: Obama is going to support the Democratic nominee once the primary is decided, and not a second sooner. Anyone who thinks the sitting president is going to pick a favorite in the ongoing primary of his own party is out of their goddamn minds.

  20. 20.

    scav

    @Baud: I don’t know. it could just be a plot so that we don’t notice any comments suddenly gone missing. A 400 count thread could somehow become no better than a cheap 200 tpi long twin sheet and we’d never know . . . .

  22. 22.

    Baud

    @scav: An interesting idea. I can’t deny that I’ve often thought this blog could use a good culling from time to time.

  23. 23.

    chopper

    @Mnemosyne:

    Anyone who thinks the sitting president is going to pick a favorite in the ongoing primary of his own party is out of their goddamn minds.

    so about half the country is what you’re saying?

  24. 24.

    Baud

    I wonder what Obama thinks about numbered comments. But, of course, our corporate media won’t ask him about the REAL ISSUES.

  25. 25.

    qwerty42

    …I’m going to miss PBO.
    Aren’t we all.

    Josh Marshall had a good take on the kind of person PBO will nominate:
    ” …
    Obama is fundamentally an institutionalist, temperamentally conservative and he sees the Court itself as something he has some ownership and purchase on as a lawyer and former law professor. Because of that, I do not think it is at all likely that Obama would nominate someone who he would not have given serious consideration to nominating, if he’d gotten this opportunity in 2015 or 2014. I don’t think it’s in him. It is not in his character to make a nomination which is not someone he doesn’t think belongs on the Court – even if one could possibly justify such a decision because we know the person isn’t going to make it there anyway.
    …”

    He takes his job and its responsibilities seriously. He is the adult in the room. (Josh does concede “Now, I’m not saying he’s immune or above the strategy and the politics. They’ll play some role. “)
    But the selection will be someone he would want under any circumstances. That’s how he rolls.

  26. 26.

    chopper

    @Baud:

    “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the useless posts of bloggers and commenters”

  27. 27.

    Calouste

    @Baud: Most of the White House Press Corpse would be exceedingly well qualified to be a media personality in Russia. They wouldn’t even have to pretend to be neutral, because there isn’t really another side. Not having to deal with the wrong kind of people being President or in power in general, it’s their dream job.

    Oh, journalist? Well, they’re not journalists here, why would they become journalists in Russia?

  28. 28.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Baud:
    I’m not watching this one, but I’ve listened to these conferences before. It would be ‘President Obama, some are saying that numbered comments are gone because you took personal responsibility for implementing numbered comments, then failed to do so. What would you say to those people?’

  29. 29.

    redshirt

    Twitter is having a ball at Jeb’s expense with his tweet of a gun with his own name on it.

    Also, BO just put a lead anchor around Rubio’s neck by speaking well of him.

  30. 30.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    I can’t deny that I’ve often thought this blog could use a good culling from time to time.

    You DO realize, don’t you, that Presidential candidates will be the first ones culled, right?

    Wait, did I say that out loud?

  32. 32.

    geg6

    I’m going to miss him, too. I am just so glad I survived the Bush coup and lived to have this man as my president. Best of my lifetime, no question. And I’m an old.

  34. 34.

    Eric S.

    @Old Dan and Little Anne: He almost gave one today. I swear he almost said, “One would be fucking hard pressed to find that in the Constitution.” I heard the ef sound start, there was the briefest of pauses and then continued with “hard pressed…”.

  35. 35.

    SFAW

    @chopper:

    with the useless posts of bloggers and commenters”

    Shouldn’t that be “with the posts of useless bloggers and commenters”?

  37. 37.

    debbie

    I like Obama’s response on Syria. He makes a good point: Russia now has a prize to go with the prize they got when they invaded Afghanistan.

    I also liked his pointing out that the other candidates were no less nutso than Trump, but I do wish there was a law forcing journalists to ask shorter questions.

  38. 38.

    Mnemosyne

    @qwerty42:

    It would be very cool if Goodwin Liu (currently on the CA Supreme Court) would be nominated. Republicans blocked his elevation on the federal level because they feared it would make him eligible for the US Supreme Court, so I’d love to see Obama stick a finger in their eye while still nominating a rising star.

  41. 41.

    Gimlet

    You know that if Scalia had not wanted Obama to name his successor, he would not have died at this time.

  42. 42.

    Shortribs

    @redshirt:

    Also, BO just put a lead anchor around Rubio’s neck by speaking well of him.

    Dang, I want Rubio to win the GOP nod. There’s nothing interesting or inspiring about him, he’s neither intelligent or wise, he can’t pull off cool despite being rather young and when he speaks he’s just annoying and makes me thirsty. He’s the perfect candidate to run against.

  44. 44.

    scav

    @catclub: That either only means you’re a part of the secret in-group, or, possibly, we’ve been culled. Bit, then, I’ve been amusing myself with reading about Quarks and leptons, so I may be projecting a little about mysterious collapses of waves, spooky communication and unexpected decays into taus of a different color.

  45. 45.

    Turgidson

    @Cacti:

    Whoever asked about Syria probably had a note slipped to them by McCain and Huckleberry Graham. Yeah, I mean, Putin’s air strikes seem to be having the desired short term effect of preventing Assad’s fall, but part of the reason is that he doesn’t feel the need to try particularly hard to avoid collateral damage and civilian casualties. The US’s air power could turn Syria to a glass parking lot in a matter of days if it felt similarly unconstrained. For all the good that would do.

  46. 46.

    Mike J

    Hershell Bryant ‏@Hershell_Bryant 2h2 hours ago
    Nate Silver only gives Hillary a 99% chance of winning SC…yes, that’s 99%, so it’s basically an @msnbc tie

  47. 47.

    Brachiator

    @Batgirl:

    MomSense was talking about a book in an earlier post about the different ways other countries achieve universal healthcare

    For a good free reference you can also do a google search of “International Profiles Of Health Care Systems 2014” and get a pdf of a good summary edited by Elias Mossialos of the Commonwealth Fund. Covers countries from Australia to the USA.

  48. 48.

    Germy

    @catclub:

    comment numbers have disappeared for me.

    And for me. And I am blue (my name is blue)

    bold

    bold is still black, though. That’s good.

  49. 49.

    El Caganer

    @debbie: The question itself was goofy. How would Obama have been ‘outfoxed?’ Russia has a major interest in Syria; we don’t. I have no idea what the questioner meant – we’re losing something because the Russians are wiping out ISIS faster than we are? I’ll take that sort of ‘outfoxing’ any day of the week.

  50. 50.

    Applejinx

    Do we need to have a thread on Jeb Bush’s tweet, or is Jeb Bush boring even while wielding a handgun?

  52. 52.

    jl

    @Mike J: Why not 100 percent? HRC campaign in crisis?
    Opening for Baud! 2016!? A politician, for once, who is exactly as silly as he seems. No one else has that kind of authenticity.

  53. 53.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @Shortribs:
    Anyone that lived through 1999 and the shit show that was the Bush campaign has to be concerned about any GOP candidate that can play ‘normal’ Cruz is such a bad guy I think he would be dead meat. Trump is scary because of the loonies he attracts but I don’t see him seriously challenging any grown ups in the general election. JEB? already has an anchor with his name, Kasich may be the scariest because he appears the most human. But I would not discount the medias ability to cover for Rubotio so I really don’t want him to get the nod.

  54. 54.

    Baud

    @Applejinx: I said in the last thread that it would have been less offensive if he tweeted a dick pic.

    But it’s Jeb, so I understand it if the front pagers don’t want to waste server space on him.

  55. 55.

    scav

    @Applejinx: Could the hamsters even possibly keep up with a thread per Bush innanity? We’d likely all have to double up and talk to ourselves in multiple dedicated threads.

  57. 57.

    MomSense

    Oh FFS MSNBC is playing a snippet from W’s speech for JEB?. I can’t stand hearing that asshole’s voice. It all comes flooding back.

  61. 61.

    Calouste

    @El Caganer: It’s the usual RWNJ idea that you can’t have winners without losers. Russia, from a certain perspective, looks like the winner here, so in the RWNJ mind, America must be the loser. Win-win, or even win-we don’t care, doesn’t exist for these people.

    See also: sparrow and curtain rod.

  62. 62.

    MomSense

    Also, too I can’t edit because FYWP but Dukakis gave an interview to Slate. It’s a good read especially what he has to say about his law school classmate Scalia.

  63. 63.

    D58826

    Been a good week so far. From the AP

    PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge says Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy should stay behind bars because he’s a danger to the community and a risk for failing to show up for future court dates.

    U.S. Magistrate Judge Janice Stewart ruled Tuesday that Bundy shouldn’t be released ahead of trial because “that is likely the last the government will see of him.”

  64. 64.

    Germy

    I was shocked when I saw W campaigning for his brother. I didn’t recognize him at first.

    Silly of me to expect him to look the way he did in 2000, but his thinning hair and lined face took me by surprise.

  65. 65.

    Gimlet

    Any thoughts on Scalia overdoing the alcohol that night, getting a CNS depressant effect from it and then having a sleep apneic episode punch his ticket out of here?

  66. 66.

    Baud

    @jl: I think the Democratic voters of South Carolina are looking for a candidate who is both practically inspirational and inspiringly practical. I’m a shoo in.

  68. 68.

    Origuy

    It never fails: when the original management of a startup changes, the corporate culture changes and morale goes to shit. IS faces budget crunch, cutting perks and trimming salaries

    The extremists who once bragged about minting their own currency are having a hard time meeting expenses, thanks to coalition airstrikes and other measures that have eroded millions from their finances since last fall. Having built up loyalty among militants with good salaries and honeymoon and baby bonuses, the group has stopped providing even the smaller perks: free energy drinks and Snickers bars.

    “They took away our Snickers bars, Achmed! How will we establish a world-wide caliphate without Snickers bars?”

  69. 69.

    Germy

    @MomSense: Interesting remarks in that Dukakis interview:

    But I didn’t know who Scalia was until the last semester of my last year, when I took a class called Federal Courts and the Federal System, with a great man named Henry Hart. It is 1960. We are in the middle of the civil rights revolution. And there’s this guy in class who begins engaging Professor Hart every day in these long dialogues over whether it was appropriate for federal judges to reach in and take cases away from Southern criminal courts, in cases where, as everyone knew, if you were a black defendant, forget it. And this went on for about three weeks. [Laughs.] I finally turned to the guy next to me and said, “Who the hell is that guy?” He said, “That’s Scalia, he’s on the law review.” And I said, “Does he know what it’s like to be black in the South?” A bright guy—yeah. But he was to the right of Marie Antoinette for Christ’s sake. There was no consistency in his so-called philosophy. Money is corporate speech. This is all preposterous.

  71. 71.

    JPL

    @Gimlet: The coroner/justice of the peace who pronounced that he died of natural causes, made a statement today. Scalia’s doctor told her, he suffered from heart trouble and had high blood pressure. He also injured his shoulder but they did not recommend surgery because he was to weak for the procedure. It sounds like Scalia should have retired sooner.

  72. 72.

    Mike J

    @Gimlet: If we’re just going for speculation[1], why not say a scorpion got him?[2]

    [1] making things up
    [2] I almost said snake to set up the joke with the punchline, “professional courtesy.”

  73. 73.

    Linda Featheringill

    @geg6:

    I think you and I are sort of fraternal twins on the “old” scale. And yes, Obama is the most qualified man we’ve had in the White House during my memory. And I started following politics in 1952.

  74. 74.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @Gimlet:
    poppers and young boys! His heart couldn’t take it like the old days. That or tertiary syphilis.

    whatever it was it was 20 tears too late

  76. 76.

    Germy

    The Christian Serpent

    A RATTLESNAKE came home to his brood and said: “My children, gather about and receive your father’s last blessing, and see how a Christian dies.”

    “What ails you, Father?” asked the Small Snakes.

    “I have been bitten by the editor of a partisan journal,” was the
    reply, accompanied by the ominous death-rattle.

    – Ambrose Bierce

  78. 78.

    Calouste

    @Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): I highly doubt ru-ru-rubio can make it through three one-on-one debates with making a complete fool of himself. He’ll probably conveniently sprain his ankle or catch a cold before the debates to get out of them. Anyway, chances he is going to win are exceedingly slim, even if he consolidates the Bush and Kasich voters behind him, which is unlikely to happen before Super Tuesday, he only gets about 25% of the vote. And Super Tuesday decides more than 25% of the delegates, the vast majority in winner-takes-most contests.

  81. 81.

    Jeffro

    @geg6: Seconded (both on the sentiment and being old!)

    On the flip side, my kids (14 and 10) and I are having some absolutely great political/civics/history conversations these days at the dinner table as both the primary process and now this Supreme Court nomination issue plays out. They’re intensely interested in all of it.

  83. 83.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @Calouste:
    An ‘open’ convention would be a gift & I pray to pasta every night for that with lots of fist fights & people making enemies for life. Of course the powers that be won’t let Trump or Cruz have the nomination. I think Ryan would be their dream candidate. He scares me most because the media is already in the tank for him. They pretend he is a serious wonk while never examining his actual proposals.

  84. 84.

    Brachiator

    @El Caganer:

    Russia has a major interest in Syria; we don’t. I have no idea what the questioner meant – we’re losing something because the Russians are wiping out ISIS faster than we are?

    It wasn’t too long ago that Obama was saying that Assad had to go. That demand has been rendered null and void by Putin’s support of the regime. Secretary of State Kerry has been talking about the “hopeful signs” of peace talks with the various parties involved, and yet most reports indicate that Assad is using Russian support and the pretense of the peace talks as an opportunity to crush the opposition.

    Anyone who thinks that the Russians are attacking ISIS needs to put down the crack pipe.

    Meanwhile, there are 2.5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey and approximately 11.5 percent of Syria’s population has been killed or wounded in Syria’s civil war.

    Western “leadership” to oust Assad and replace him with “moderate” leadership is a cruel joke. Instead, you not only have instability in the region, but a fanning out of instability that impacts Europe and the Middle East.

    This is a serious problem for Obama, and it will be a problem for his successor.

  86. 86.

    Turgidson

    @Schlemazel (parmesan rancor):

    The Village media desperately wants to replay the 2000 election with Rubio in the GWB part as the affable empty suit, except young and diverse this time(!) and Hillary in the Gore part, except as an even more joyless, humorless scold with an even bigger honesty problem. They would go to unimaginable lengths to paper over Rubio’s batshit policy positions, his thin skin, his unpreparedness for any important executive office (much less the presidency) and drag him over the finish line against Hillary, who they’ve been trying to bury for 25 years now.

    They wouldn’t be able to play it this way with any of the other candidates, though they’d go into the tank for Kasich too. Jeb’s last name is still poison and he’s just so clearly a weenie who doesn’t have the weird everyman charm that George did (though I never found it charming – quite the opposite). Everyone hates Tailgunner Ted’s fucking guts, even the Villagers. Trump is too unpredictable to play the part. They’d give Kasich an epic reach-around if he somehow became the nominee, but he doesn’t fit the GWB affable bum archetype so they’d have to figure something else out. But Rubio…now THERE’S a guy you can set your “genial GOP everyman” watch to.

    I fear him as the nominee for that reason. Substantively, he’s a joke and a fraud. But these things often aren’t decided on substance.

  87. 87.

    Emma

    @Germy: It seems to me every president, even the terrible ones, seems to go into the job looking fairly decent and comes out looking like crap. I can’t imagine why anyone wants the tsuris.

  89. 89.

    SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel

    @Applejinx:

    I saw Jeb’s handgun picture on FB. Someone commented that the safety was off. I am so pig-ignorant about guns and what they look like and how they work that I (a) had no idea the safety was off in the first place and (b) wouldn’t know how to recognise the safety if it walked in my front door, let alone how to put it on.

    ETA: Put it on the gun, I mean. Obviously.

  91. 91.

    PurpleGirl

    @JPL: From my own medical experiences, I’d say Scalia had uncontrolled hypertension. His hands were just so pudgy and bloated. Even if he took his medication as prescribed, I don’t think it was helping him much. He was a walking time-bomb, as it were. Probably didn’t watch his diet and drank too much.

  94. 94.

    SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel

    @Baud:

    In the (admittedly unlikely) event that Jeb! were to win both the nomination and the presidency, would we be able to say things like: “Bush! Worse than Bush!” ?

    Because that would a a a a l l l l m m o o o s s t be worth it.

  95. 95.

    Mnemosyne

    @Turgidson:

    I do think that people vastly underestimate how much of a Made Man W was, though. I’m not sure the MSM would get behind someone who didn’t go to Andover with nearly as much fervor. Rubio went to public schools, my dear!

  98. 98.

    JPL

    @PurpleGirl: I thought it interesting that the justice of the peace said heart trouble, instead of disease. In GA elected coroners must have a high school education. One county coroner is a hair dresser. Maybe that’s the case in TX. BTW, how are Thomas’ hands?

  100. 100.

    Baud

    @Mnemosyne: Oddly enough, the one advantage W. had was that his familial support was his anchor in dealing with party issues. Rubio would be kind of all alone in Republican politics if he were the nominee. I don’t see him as having any internal strength.

  101. 101.

    sigaba

    His take on whether Putin “outfoxed” him in Syria was interesting. He said Putin has assumed responsibility for a failed state and is spending billions, so he’s not sure that’s such a great prize.

    Whenever PBO wins 11-dimensional chess, the press just insists there are 12 dimensions.

    They’ve made it totally clear they’re not judging the guy by what he accomplishes, but by how uninformed people feel about it. “Lots of people think you’re coming for their guns” is what qualifies as a tough question.

  105. 105.

    Brachiator

    @Turgidson:

    The Village media desperately wants to replay the 2000 election with Rubio in the GWB part as the affable empty suit, except young and diverse this time(!) and Hillary in the Gore part, except as an even more joyless, humorless scold with an even bigger honesty problem.

    i’ve never thought of Hillary as being anything like Gore, nor do I think that Gore had an honesty problem.

    Interesting comparison, though.

    On the other hand, I’ve never given much credence to any power that the Village media has over anything, including presidential elections. Pundits are still puzzled over the Trump phenomenon and he is such a wild card that he may actually have a chance at the GOP nomination. And hell, I thought he would implode long ago, creating an opportunity for Baby Rubio or Cruz to fight it out for the top spot.

  106. 106.

    les

    @Batgirl: Frontline did a good show on this, including a q&a with Reid. It looks at Great Britain, Switzerland, Germany, Japan and Singapore. One question asked of top folks in each country was, how many people went bankrupt because of medical costs. They were all basically shocked at the question–they couldn’t imagine such a thing happening. Great little country we got here.

  108. 108.

    Germy

    @Mike J: Is it a not-so-veiled message to Trump? “You talk about my family again, I’ll shoooot you” ?

    In the last GOP debate, I expected to see someone throw a punch.

  109. 109.

    Tripod

    Guns, gays, God. It just doesn’t matter for Jeb; W and Cheney traded his shot for a few good quarters for Haliburton.

  110. 110.

    Jeffro

    @Mike J: Almost went to see Nate Silver talking with Tyler Cowen earlier today…then I came to my senses and spent some time with my kids.

    Little victories!

  111. 111.

    JustRuss

    @Turgidson: Yeah, Rubio’s about the only one who can play the “He seems nice” card to pull in the low-info undecideds. Sadly, not an attribute to be discounted.

  112. 112.

    piratedan

    @sigaba: yeah… they’re not judging him, they’re letting a totally misinformed public judge him, after all, why should they inform the public about what policy really means.

    I still think the first heads on the pikes should be the news directors that determine what spin needs to be applied to the news,

  113. 113.

    Jeffro

    @Iowa Old Lady: Here’s the question I really, truly, enjoy asking my right-leaning friends and relatives: even if Trump were to only pull 35-40% of the delegates across all these primaries…when it comes time to select a nominee…even in a brokered convention…explain to me how the GOP powers-that-be manage to a) not select Trump and yet also b) manage to make Trump happy enough that he doesn’t blow the convention to smithereens and run third-party (even just as a write-in…I doubt he could be bothered to spend the time and money to put up a serious “independent” campaign.

    Unless the primaries somehow manage to start getting steadily lower numbers for Trump (with Jeb AND Cruz also doing worse, because Trump’ll stay in just to screw them) there is no way to avoid a Cleveland meltdown, other than just handing Trump the nom.

  115. 115.

    Bobby Thomson

    @El Caganer: the dirty little secret is no one is fighting Daesh in Syria. They are an excuse for other states to be involved in Syria’s civil war, which is where the real action is. Russia is winning that war, which is why Saudi Arabia is getting involved.

  117. 117.

    Turgidson

    @Brachiator:

    I didn’t say those comparisons were fair or accurate. Gore was more honest and had more integrity than your typical presidential candidate, I’d say. Certainly more than almost any Republican and more than his boss at the time. But the Villagers, with encouragement from the Bush campaign ratfkers, created a narrative about Gore being a serial exaggerator, while Bush (the one who, it so happens, actually was lying with astonishing frequency) was a good ol’ boy who wouldn’t dare. The media has been pounding away at their beloved Hillary has an “honesty problem” narrative for decades already. Gore was “stiff, wooden” and wore “earth tones”, and Hillary will have her pant suits judged and has already had countless “why can’t she connect to her audience” type columns written about her campaign. It’s so easy for the inherently lazy Villagers, they can basically just pull up their old columns and do some CTRL+F work and be done with it.

    Rubio’s supposed to be a young, forward thinking, fresh face who can relate to a wider spectrum of voters than past candidates like Mittens. They’ll do whatever they have to do to make him seem human, charming, empathetic, whatever it takes. Just like they did with “compassionate conservative” GWB.

    Whether they still have the pull with the electorate to tip the balance to the Rubiobot is another question. Their credibility is rightly in the shitter and each day of banal Trump coverage digs them in deeper.

  122. 122.

    danielx

    And Trump will never be president (PBO says he has faith in the American people).

    More faith than I, alas.

  123. 123.

    SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel

    @Mike J:

    Thank you. See, that’s the kind of basic stuff I probably should know, but don’t. So this is going to be another night when I go to bed a bit more informed than I was when I woke up this morning.

  124. 124.

    SiubhanDuinne, Annoying Scoundrel

    @Tripod:

    Did not know he was a smoker. Clearly he was, if not technically obese, at least….

    Okay, technically obese.

  126. 126.

    Turgidson

    @sigaba:

    While I generally agree that Obama has racked up a very impressive W/L record and has gotten very little credit for it, least of all by the Village Idiots, Syria can hardly be considered a win. It’s a total disaster and its ill effects are spreading to neighboring countries and even into Europe.

    Unlike the armchair Napoleons in the press and among the GOP, I don’t claim to know what could or should have been done at some earlier date to avert the crisis. And I put way, way, way more blame for the current predicament on the Iraqi government (re letting ISIS spread) and the various Iran-influenced proxies that have allowed Assad to limp along for all this time. But it’s hard to imagine that the situation we have today is the best possible. And Obama, fairly or not, will be judged harshly for that. At the very least, his team badly miscalculated that Assad was likely to fall fairly early on with or without American involvement, and that mistaken belief has snowballed.

    I hope his and John Kerry’s last act of diplomatic determination is to figure out some way for the world to work cooperatively to humanely deal with the Syrian refugees, even if there is no immediate resolution to the conflict.

  127. 127.

    Calouste

    @Jeffro: If Trump gets 35-40% of the vote in a race, but keeps in the lead in a race with multiple candidates, he’ll quite easily rack up more than 50% of the delegates.

  128. 128.

    Turgidson

    @JMG:

    We definitely saw the media gasp in unison in the days after the debate faceplant. Their confidence in Rubio as the ideal GOP blank slate to nominate was probably shaken. But I imagine, given how preposterous the rest of the GOP field is (less Kasich who still has no path to the nomination), they would still prefer to have Rubio as the nominee and go forward with the 2000-redux “Rubio whitewash deluxe” plan.

  130. 130.

    gogol's wife

    @Gimlet:

    I couldn’t stand to read most of the coverage of Scalia (too respectful), but I did read a curious article in the NYTimes about the man who owns the resort and who found him in the morning. S. had arrived the day before, watched people hunting quail (he didn’t hunt himself), then there was a cocktail reception followed by dinner, after which he went to bed. And no one ever saw him alive again. But what really struck me was that he was in the “presidential suite” at this luxury resort, and the article noted that he and his friends were staying there for free.

  131. 131.

    raven

    @Mike J:

    The M249 light machine gun (LMG), formerly designated the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW), and formally written as Light Machine Gun, 5.56 mm, M249, is the American adaptation of the Belgian FN Minimi, a light machine gun manufactured by the Belgian company FN Herstal (FN). The M249 is manufactured in the United States by the local subsidiary FN Manufacturing LLC in South Carolina and is widely used in the U.S. Armed Forces. The weapon was introduced in 1984 after being judged the most effective of a number of candidate weapons to address the lack of automatic firepower in small units. The M249 provides infantry squads with the heavy volume of fire of a machine gun combined with accuracy and portability approaching that of a rifle.

    Cuz they are better weapons?

  132. 132.

    ET

    I just “love” the @Jeb tweet that features an up-close image of a handgun with just the word America.

  137. 137.

    Van Buren

    @Turgidson: Oh God, I’ve always dismissed Rubio, but when you frame it this way I had a flashback to the way Cokie Roberts so openly shilled for Bush it made me want to vomit.
    So yeah, it wouldn’t be a slam dunk if he’s the nom.
    They would spend 3 months telling us what a saint he is and what a monster Hillary is.

  142. 142.

    dww44

    @Germy: Same here. I thought Laura looked great. She seems to have shed a few pounds. GWB with the receding hair and the thinner face looks even more like his Dad. While I know he’s laid low for the last 7 years, I didn’t think he’d disappeared long enough to have aged that much. In George the younger’s case, apparently the post Presidency has done more to age him than did his Presidency. That remark is not in jest, either.

  144. 144.

    Jay C

    @dww44:

    Also, some of it has to be just the passage of time: GWB was born July 6, 1946: so he was 54 when he was elected, left office at 62, and will be 70 this year: not unexpected that he looks a bit ragged (though I also was surprised at just HOW ragged he looked).

    And like Barack Obama doesn’t look like eight years on the job have gotten to him? How much grey hair did he have when sworn in???

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