Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

The words do not have to be perfect.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Let there be snark.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

T R E 4 5 O N

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Infrastructure week. at last.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

No one could have predicted…

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

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Usually wrong but never in doubt

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

This really is a full service blog.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / Late-Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: Vaya con el Diablo, JEB!

Late-Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: Vaya con el Diablo, JEB!

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jeb ebb via dan savage

(via Dan Savage)

Clearing our shelves (for the season) — everything must go! Mr. Charles P. Pierce:

… He spent gobs of money. He hired all the best people. He had the name and the pedigree. And every one of those conventional credentials were turned against him as vehicles for mockery and derision by He, Trump, the wild-card for whom nobody had planned. Trump mocked Bush’s spending for its lack of results. Trump mocked Bush’s campaign for its lack of results. Trump mocked Bush himself for being low-energy, and for his lack of results. Meanwhile, Bush and his campaign worked day and night to lend obvious substance to every charge levelled by He, Trump…

(Do not make the mistake of thinking that I sympathize in any way with the sad political destruction of Jeb (!) Bush—except, of course, in the sense that it makes the presidency of He, Trump more of a possibility—because I still remember how, out of raw political ambition, he made the lives of a lot of good people miserable. Fuckabuncha him forever for having done that.)

Now, though, Jeb (!) is merely the symbol of a political party and a nominating process gone truly rogue, burning and consuming itself, using itself as its own fuel like some great breeder reactor of rage and fear. Bush, like all the members of the now vestigial Republican “establishment,” who spent 30 years developing the perfect context for something like the Trump campaign to occur, was stunned into incoherence when it actually happened. Watching him in his farewell on Saturday night was to recall what Abraham Lincoln said about General William Rosecrans after the Union’s defeat at Chickamauga; Rosecrans, Lincoln mused, was “confused and stunned, like a duck hit on the head.”…

Jeb Lund, in the Guardian:

In announcing the suspension of his campaign, Jeb Bush couldn’t have found a more apt expression for his departure from a contest that was beyond his ken than “I congratulate my competitors who are remaining on the island”. The 2016 Republican presidential primary is a thing forged in madness; as befitting the functional illogic of a reality TV show, it doesn’t make a lick of damn sense beyond itself, but the results cannot be appealed. Jeb has been voted off the island; he is the weakest link; goodbye…

… Bush launched The New Bush Experience by gathering around him every establishment neoconservative from either the Reagan or the Bush II years – a soulless sludge of amoral warmongering boobery that, ethically-speaking, resembled the invitees to a North Korean state dinner. (They are the sort of people who put on jackets covered with epaulettes and ribbons from armchair campaigns before mounting their rider mower and treating the lawn like they’re about to daisy-cutter Vietnam.) Bush insisted he was his own man by announcing that he’d listen to advice from the people who belonged to at least one other institutional failure…

When it couldn’t conceivably get any worse, Donald Trump entered the race. Blaming Jeb’s failure on him devalues just how badly Bush could’ve simply screwed his campaign up on his own. Trump was the accelerant, but Bush had to fumble and drop a lit cigarette into his pants cuff before the Trump-branded gasoline could do its work.

Trump didn’t make Bush reply to a mass shooting with, “Stuff happens”. He didn’t make Bush, a man married to a Mexican woman and the father of mixed-race children who almost exclusively speaks Spanish in his own home, say that we shouldn’t live in a multicultural society. He didn’t make Bush say that people in this country needed to work longer hours. He didn’t tell Bush that Obama’s daughter’s name was “Malala” (which is the name of the Nobel peace prize winning Taliban shooting victim turned women’s rights activist), not “Malia”.

None of that even gets to all those weird, doomed attempts by Bush’s campaign to make him go viral: pictures of Bush flashing the liners to his blazers, showing his JEB! emblem on a white background. Or the picture of a somewhat pathetic and forlorn Jeb standing in a hoodie, staring at the camera, as if pleading to know when this ends. Or him taking a selfie in front of the “Peachoid”. Or that last, harrowing Twitter picture, of a gun with his name engraved on it; Bush simply tweeted, “America.” …

At the Washington Post, “Fall of the House of Bush”:

… Whether Jeb Bush ever had a chance to win the Republican nomination in a campaign year that proved so ill fitting for a rusty politician who preferred policy papers to political combat is a question that will be debated long after the 2016 race has ended…

Mike Murphy, the chief strategist for Bush’s super PAC, Right to Rise, explained what had happened this way on Sunday. “Our theory was to dominate the establishment lane into the actual voting primaries,” he said. “That was the strategy, and it did not work. I think it was the right strategy for Jeb. The problem was there was a huge anti-establishment wave. The establishment lane was smaller than we thought it would be. The marketplace was looking for something different, and we’ll find out how that ends when we have a nominee.”

The result is one of the most startling failures in the modern history of American politics…

Speaking of Mike Murphy, here’s Politico — “Inside Jeb Bush’s $150 Million Failure”…

Jeb Bush, the Republican establishment’s last, best hope, began his 2016 campaign rationally enough, with a painstakingly collated operational blueprint his team called, with NFL swagger, “The Playbook.”

On page after page kept safe in a binder, the playbook laid out a strategy for a race his advisers were certain would be played on Bush’s terms — an updated, if familiar version of previous Bush family campaigns where cash, organization and a Republican electorate ultimately committed to an electable center-right candidate would prevail.

The playbook, hatched by Sally Bradshaw, Mike Murphy and a handful of other Bush confidants in dozens of meetings during the first half of 2015 and described to POLITICO by some of Bush’s closest and most influential supporters, appealed to the Bush family penchant for shock-and-awe strategy. The campaign would commence with six months of fundraising for the Right to Rise super PAC and enough muscle to push aside Mitt Romney. There would be a massive, broad-based organizational effort to plant roots in March states at a time when other campaigns were mired in Iowa and New Hampshire. The plan outlined Bush’s positive, future-focused message with an emphasis on his decade-old record of accomplishment as Florida governor.

Interviews with more than two dozen Bush insiders, donors and staff members illuminate the plight of an earnest and smart candidate who was tragicomically mismatched to the electorate of his own party and an unforgiving, mean media environment that broadcast his flaws. The entire premise of Bush’s candidacy, these insiders tell POLITICO, was an epic misread of a GOP base hostile to any establishment candidate, especially one with his baggage-weighted last name…

Molly Ball, back in January, in the Atlantic:

… To a degree not common to other candidates, Bush’s supporters feel protective of him and grieved for his sake. They seem acutely aware that he was never supposed to be in this position—mired in the back of the crowded pack of candidates, struggling to be heard, on the edge of being counted out. A campaign that began with a frontrunner’s fanfare now averages less than 5 percent in national polls. It’s a situation that might be humbling or humiliating for your average governor or senator making a run at the title, but it takes on special resonance for a member of one of America’s royal families.

The fact of Bush’s lineage has made the grim saga of the campaign something more than Jeb’s personal drama. It has been his burden and his boon alike, elevating and stifling him at the same time. The topic of his family follows him everywhere, and not just because the media brings it up constantly. The voters, too, want to talk about it, with an unnerving intimacy…

“I’m a 62-year-old man that has a life experience,” he added. “People are going to vote for me. They love my dad; some may love my brother and not love my dad—it’s a little more complicated, it’s not a unified deal. I’m proud of them. I’m not running away from them—that is total nonsense.” Bush praised his older brother for his leadership and for keeping America safe, then reiterated that he had to win the nomination on his own merits. “I spend time talking about my family in a loving way—you can’t ignore them, because that’s weird,” he said. “You can’t over-rely on them, either. There’s a balance.”…

To quote Peggy Noonan: Let. Us. Savor. While we can…

Reader Interactions

104Comments

  2. 2.

    Archon

    Does right2rise still chime in on balloon juice? I always found his hubris funny in a deluded sort of way.

  3. 3.

    RobertDSC-Quad Intel Mac

    I kind of wish Trump had simply clapped his hands at Jeb during one of the debates, then delivered a snide “You wanted clapping, now you got it.”

  4. 4.

    pacem appellant

    I’ve been toying with the 2016 electoral map, and it looks brutal for the GOP. If Hillz (or Sanders) is in it to win it, I don’t see how the GOP flips enough states to hit 270. The Dems need only to get the Blue and Bluish-Purple states and they get 266 out of the gate. They will need to win only OH, IA, or FL, but don’t need all three. Where as the GOP needs all three to win. (Plus VA and NC, which I’m giving them given that I predict an election more like 2012 than 2008). So, since this is the Dems we’re talking about, how does Hillary or Bernie pull a John Kerry and screw this up?

  5. 5.

    Chris

    God, I’m still so happy. Like Mitt Romney four years ago, Jeb Bush was a man in incredibly bad need of being slapped in the face with the fact that you can’t always have what you want, no matter how rich you are or who your daddy is. My only regret is that this embarrassment didn’t drag out any longer.

  7. 7.

    dmsilev

    @Archon: He’s switched allegiance to Rubio. Didn’t even take a day.

    I feel morally certain that we’ll see him singing the praises of Trump once the time comes.

  9. 9.

    JGabriel

    Weirdly enough, I don’t think Trump was a major factor in Jeb’s flame-out. Jeb would have failed just as spectacularly even if Trump had never entered the race. I think it was Cruz, Rubio, and, most importantly, Jeb himself, who were responsible.

    I’ve little doubt that Trump was the major factor in knocking Walker, Christie, Fiorina, Santorum, and the rest of the Kiddie Table Club out of the race so early – but Jeb was his own worst nemesis.

  11. 11.

    PurpleGirl

    @Archon: He changed his nym several times and last commented a few days ago. Haven’t heard from him in a day or two. I expect he’s having a major depressive event.

    ETA: Yeah, I forgot he’d changed his allegiance to Rubio. Still clinging to a loser.

  12. 12.

    amk

    @JGabriel:

    No, I give full credit to trump for plotting dumbya3’s demise. Other cowards would have peed in their pants trying to attack the lil fecker.

  16. 16.

    lgerard

    Don’t cry for Jeb↓

    The fine managerial skills he demonstrated during the campaign will certainly win him an honored place in corporate America

  18. 18.

    JGabriel

    @pacem appellant:

    Plus VA and NC, which I’m giving them [the GOP] given that I predict an election more like 2012 than 2008

    I think the Democratic Presidential nominee will probably hold on to VA, just as Obama did in 2012. Virginia’s heavy reliance on the defense industry, tech industry, and DC bureaucracy, make Northeaster VA – which is the most populous area – a lot more like a Mid-Atlantic blue state than its historical Dixie affiliation.

  19. 19.

    Thomas More

    @pacem appellant:

    Absolutely.

    Just run the 13 Lichtman keys. A Democrat will be the next president, irrespective of the absurdly large negatives in Trump’s polling and the obvious insanity of his “platform” (if you can call a bunch of unhinged rants about Mexican drug dealers and Obama attending Scala’s funeral if it had been in a mosque a political platform).

    @JGabriel:

    I agree 100%. The Charles Pierce piece sounds wrong to me, because it doesn’t explain the rise of Bernie on the left.

    The specific problem with Bush’s campaign is that he was running a 2004-era campaign based on foreign policy. But 2004 lies far behind us. We’re no longer embroiled in an endless war in Iraq, we’re no longer living in the shadow of 9/11. Times have changed. People are now scared to death of giant faceless corporations offshoring their jobs, not of crazed arabs flying planes into skyscrapers.

    The economy is now the big problem on the average voter’s mind. Jeb Bush didn’t realize that. He thought he could get away with mouthing the usual Reagan-era GOP pabulum about slashing social security and medicare and expanding free trade to ship more middle-class jobs overseas and nobody would care because they were all still scared to death of a 9/11-style attack.

    People are no longer terrified of color-coded alerts. They’re terrified of losing their jobs in an economy which has not yet recovered from the biggest economic crash since the Great Depression. Bush didn’t realize that — probably because he’s so rich, he has no idea what the concerns of the average person are. Karl Rove was the supreme political strategist of the 9/11 era. But the 9/11 era is over. So Rove’s strategies of fear, fear, fear, fear, fear of evil terrists! are now obsolete.

    Trump is rising in the polls because he has latched on to the fears of the American electorate circa 2016 — losing their jobs to immigrants, losing their medicare and social security. Hillary is doing an even better job of addressing those fears with real policies, though, as is Bernie Sanders. So Trump will get blown away in November.

  21. 21.

    frosty fka Bro Shotgun etc etc

    I just read the CNN interview linked above when he talked about speaking Spanish in the house. He’s bilingual and proud of it. That, his marriage, some of his views on combatting drug addiction, all seem reasonable. To run as a Republican, he basically ran against his own beliefs. No wonder he came off as inauthentic and miserable.

    Maybe he should have flipped Mom and Dad the bird and changed parties when he married Columba.

  22. 22.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Lolis: Being that Hillary is the lovechild of the Antichrist and Satan(as we discussed this morning), how did she get God to narrate her commercial?

  24. 24.

    Peale

    @JGabriel: Depends. I mean, Trump is kind of the guy you’d believe when he says “I’ll build us a military so hooooge that we’ll never have to use it.” Big contracts and the stuff doesn’t even have to work since it won’t be used.

  27. 27.

    NotMax

    Just in case it doesn’t get de-moderated, alternate version:

    So what does [RtR] do with their remaining resources?

    Purchase voodoo dolls of the others who remain in the race, you big silly.

    Silver-plated pins by the gross don’t come cheap, ya know.

  29. 29.

    oldgold

    I think Jeb’s biggest problem was W. If Herbert Hoover had had a brother, I doubt he would have fared well in 1936.

    In conspiring to steal the 2000 election for W., Jeb unwittingly destroyed his own presidential ambitions. He reaped what he sowed.

  30. 30.

    JGabriel

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    Being that Hillary is the lovechild of the Antichrist and Satan(as we discussed this morning), how did she get God to narrate her commercial?

    God and Lucifer were pretty close friends up until God created humans. After looking at the past couple hundred millennia of mankind’s atrocities, and their (our) failure to serve as stewards of the world the way she intended, God probably decided that maybe Lucifer had a good point and decided to throw some of her political support his daughter’s way.

  31. 31.

    Karen

    I figured out long ago that Jeb wanted to be Pres – but he didn’t want to work for it and resented that he did.

  34. 34.

    Anoniminous

    By the standard Post WW2 political calculus JEB! had everything to get the nomination. Except the political skills. He was a horrible, stilted, candidate who, IMO, had a severe case of Exceptional Special Snowflake Disease.

  35. 35.

    Chris

    @frosty fka Bro Shotgun etc etc:

    Maybe he should have flipped Mom and Dad the bird and changed parties when he married Columba.

    And that’s exactly why I have so little respect for the guy. You don’t have to be your family. By all accounts, Joe Kennedy Sr. was a friggin’ scumbag – his kids still turned out all right. Jeb could’ve done something like that too, if he’d cared to.

    Nobody made him say out loud in the year 2015 that he would totally have gone to war in Iraq just like his idiot brother even knowing what we know now. Nobody made him tell everybody that his idiot brother kept us safe despite the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history happening on his watch. Nobody made him run that purge of disproportionately black Florida voters, misidentified as felons, that handed the 2000 election to his idiot brother. All that’s on him.

  37. 37.

    Thoroughly Pizzled

    @Chris: 2008 was magical, but 2012 was oh, so, viscerally satisfying. They really thought that Citizens United gave them the White House for the rest of time.

  40. 40.

    donnah

    Stephen Colbert just illustrated Jeb’s demise by flushing one of Jeb’s token turtles down the toilet, telling it to say hello to all the money Jeb’s campaign cost. heh.

  41. 41.

    BBA

    @pacem appellant: Historically, Trump’s antecedents have achieved high office without majority support by having their paramilitary gangs intimidate voters and the political establishment into handing over power. The question is, what color shirts will Trump’s goon squad wear?

  42. 42.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    JEB was doomed before he even declared.

    TampaBay from March 2013:

    Maybe, after all the gushing about his policy chops, strong executive record and ability to broaden the appeal of conservative Republicans, Jeb Bush isn’t ready for the national stage.

    Certainly anyone watching the clumsy kickoff of his book tour this week — where he pushed the 2016 presidential door wide open — had to acknowledge that his political skills are a bit rusty six years after leaving Florida’s Governor’s Mansion.

    It’s one thing to make an off-hand comment that requires backpedaling or clarification on a hot-button issue. It’s another to co-author a book on a controversial topic then make a carefully planned publicity tour that prompts much of the political world to question not only where you stand but what your motives are.

    A series of national interviews this week made Bush look like a cross between Mitt Romney — flip-flopper — and Rick Perry — having to walk back what he wrote in his own book.

    It was pathetic.

    If anyone seeming felt [rMoney]Entitled[/rMoney] it was JEB. And he was too incompetent to realize that he was in over his head, had a toxic family name, had a toxic record as governor, and was selling the same old nonsense that people weren’t interested in buying from him.

    He should never have run. But, hey, he spread loser-stink all over his family name again, so maybe his kids and grandkids will think twice before running for national office. Maybe he served as a good example for them, that way…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  43. 43.

    benw

    @Mike J:

    My curse shall lie upon this nation for seven times seven years.

    Quickly slaughters fatted calf. Offers burnt offerings upon the alter. Please have mercy upon our humble souls!

  45. 45.

    JGabriel

    Washington Post via Anne Laurie @ Top:

    Whether Jeb Bush ever had a chance to win the Republican nomination in a campaign year that proved so ill fitting for a rusty politician who preferred policy papers to political combat is a question that will be debated long after the 2016 race has ended…

    No, it won’t. Jeb didn’t win the nomination, no one will care why after election day, and his name will be forgotten like week old fish the day after the election – if not sooner.

  48. 48.

    Face

    Wow, the Nightly Show bit with Mike Yard doing conspiracy theories about Scalia was just comedic genius. Highly recc yall seek out this gem and enjoy.

  50. 50.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Omnes Omnibus: Dunno. His mother said there had been enough Bushes in the White House. His father hasn’t seemed to be too active (understandable given his age and health), and I think W just wanted to be left alone and forgotten. Neil? Who remembers Neil? :-p Marvin?? Dorothy????

    Maybe JEB felt some sort of need to “live up to” the family name and try to redeem it after W broke so much and got so many people killed. Maybe. I dunno.

    I don’t think his family was pushing him, though. Maybe his “friends” and hangers-on who wanted a piece of the action.

    Anyway, it’s good that he’s out – if only so that we don’t have to hear more of the national press reporting on how Donnie was mean to him… :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  53. 53.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I think Kerry was a person who would have been good at the job, but really didn’t want it. I think his dream job was SoS and he has done it well. I catch the same “I am doing it for duty’s sake” vibe from Jeb. The big difference is that Kerry did the best he could – he worked his ass off.

  54. 54.

    PeakVT

    I find joy in hating Jebya, and I don’t feel guilty about it, and I don’t even think it makes me a bad person.

    Does that make me a bad person? Or did I just answer that?

  57. 57.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Omnes Omnibus: Agreed. Kerry clearly wants to do a good job as SoS. He often didn’t seem to know how to react against the attacks in the Presidential campaign (and before that his “I actually did vote for the $87B before I voted against it” bit in the Senate seemed to indicate that he really didn’t fit too well there either). Kerry seems to know how to get good, thoughtful people around him – maybe not knife-fighters and assassins that are needed in political campaigns though.

    JEB is like a young substitute teacher put in Mr. Kotter’s classroom. “Respect me, please.” and at the end of the day, after he’s laughed out of the room: “Oh well, I tried. Stuff happens.”

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  58. 58.

    danielx

    @efgoldman:

    But I feel like a kid imagining xmas. Hoo boy, would that be fun.

    What with these cruel fantasies, I’m thinking you might look into the services of a good Jungian therapist. You’re far from alone..

  60. 60.

    BBA

    @Anoniminous: The Silver Shirts were America’s homegrown 1930s fascists (I mean, to the extent the Klan weren’t fascist, I’ve gotten into long arguments about this elsewhere – being violent and racist isn’t quite enough)

    Would match Trump’s superannuated base.

  64. 64.

    NotMax

    Waiting for anyone to ask the R candidates the following:

    Presuming conviction(s) in federal court, do you promise and commit to a presidential pardon for Cliven and/or Ammon Bundy?

  65. 65.

    Anne Laurie

    @efgoldman:

    Well, who can refuse gawd’s command. Not Tailgunner Teddy! So HE decides to go holy roller bible banger third party/independent.
    The party hates him, and the feeling is mutual, so why not.

    You know, I’ve been assuming for months that Ted was more interested in the grift than the office… but you’re right. Now that he’s made all his own & his old man’s sick fantasies so public, I don’t see him going away quietly if either Trump or Rubio should wrest the crown from his pudgy, well-manicured hands.

    #Failgunner Ted was moooore than willing to suggest, up until Iowa, that he’d take the undercard on “his good friend” Donald’s ticket, but that was before Trump started calling him a liar (a charge met with general media agreement — I think some of the moderators nodded in front of him). And Rubio is just a pampered little Marielito pretender, with his community-college education and his drug-dealing kinfolk. In my nastier scenarios, I can see an unhinged Cruz locked in a strange hotel room, fondling the gun he used in that bizarre bacon commercial and muttering that the LARD shall not be MOCKED…

    Wonder if the Secret Service agents have been schooled in how to deal with a candidate who tries to physically assault a fellow candidate… on a public stage?

  66. 66.

    NotMax

    @BBA

    Lived for a few years in a part of NYC which was a hotbed of the American Bund in the 30s and 40s.

    Still were some shops there in the early 1980s owned by Germans who strove mightily (but ultimately unsuccessfully) to not screw up their features in disgust at any shoppers who might possibly be Hebraic. Remember one deli owner known for refusing to personally accept payment from any he deemed “inferior,” insisting it be placed on the counter rather than be handed over directly, as was the norm for any other patrons.

  67. 67.

    Aleta

    Can’t exactly delight in the money Jeb lost, cause so much of it just dropped into the pockets of operatives who’ll continue to do harm.

    As for Trump, my question is:
    If his exact same statements and speeches were said by an exact same kind of
    guy-candidate as Trump, except that this guy never had a popular TV show, would this guy have gotten anywhere at all?

  69. 69.

    ruemara

    I really think the logo should be Meh with an interrobang. This is quite the most delicious feast conservative tears. I think this election will go down as “money can’t buy the election, when your obviously selling a turd.

  72. 72.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @efgoldman:

    but have you seen the price of onions in RI in February?

    No, I’ve never set foot in the state; though I’ve been through on the train traveling from DC to Boston.

  73. 73.

    Aleta

    I’m hoping the exposed unchristian underbelly of Cruz will make his future influence closer to 0, for happily ever after. At least his attacks on HRC or B will be more easily neutralized now I hope. (Had he saved his sinning to use against the Dem. candidate instead, the media would have run with the stories, I suppose.)

  74. 74.

    pacem appellant

    @JGabriel: If the Dems retain VA, then IA, FL, and OH do not matter. It would take someone of John Kerry’s acumen to blow it in 2016, and I don’t see either Clinton or Sanders willfully standing on that trap door. So, pass the popcorn, this going to be fun.

  75. 75.

    Aleta

    @NotMax:

    a part of NYC which was a hotbed of the American Bund in the 30s and 40s.

    What part would that be ?

    I have a theory that some experienced fascists found work postwar in the US as German teachers in East Coast prep schools.

  77. 77.

    Mnemosyne

    For the night crew who got to hear all about G’s graduate school freakout last night, an update: he got his 500 words written in plenty of time for the deadline and has already gotten his grade back — 10/10.

    It was one of those moments when a wifely I told you so was the only possible response.

  78. 78.

    mclaren

    @NotMax:

    Nobody gives a shit about the Bundy idiots or the Malheur wildlife refuge farce…except balloon-juicers.

    The issues in this presidential campaign are economic, not foreign policy, not the Bundy clowns, not partial birth abortion, not flag-burning, not Vietnam service or draft-dodging, not any of that bullshit.

    It’s the economy, stupid!

  81. 81.

    frosty fka Bro Shotgun etc etc

    @Mnemosyne:

    … already gotten his grade back — 10/10.

    No guarantees in life, but maybe this will make the 500 word essay a little easier. On the other hand, G may be in the same boat as author Gene Fowler*:

    “Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”

    * I didn’t know his name ’til I Googled the quote. Thanks internet!

  82. 82.

    Mnemosyne

    @Steeplejack:

    He’ll be fine once we get to the end of the semester and he realizes none of his dire fears came true. But there’s no way to get to that point without doing all of the work, so there’s a couple more months of angst to go.

    @ruemara:

    Not a big deal — I just had to vent about my poor, unsuspecting spouse yesterday because his angst was getting to be a little much, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by venting to his face because his “first year of grad school” angst is very real. Frankly, I would be more worried if he wasn’t angst-ridden over it.

  83. 83.

    PurpleGirl

    @NotMax: I thought you meant Yorkville on the Upper East Side. Also possibly parts of Astoria which still had German speaking people.

    ETA: I remember that into the 1950s, many landlords put ads for apartments in the German language because they didn’t want AAs to learn about the apartments.

  84. 84.

    Brachiator

    @pacem appellant:

    I’ve been toying with the 2016 electoral map, and it looks brutal for the GOP. If Hillz (or Sanders) is in it to win it, I don’t see how the GOP flips enough states to hit 270.

    It’s too early to get your crystal ball out. If Trump is the GOP nominee, he could ride anti-establishment sentiment into the White House, even pulling Democratic votes.

    What used to be a Naderite fringe is festering into an angry anti-Hillary core of unicorn humpers. Some of these people seem to be intent on whipping themselves into a stay-at-home frenzy. I think this will pass, but let’s see what this looks live after a nominee has been chosen.

    I saw a USA Today or CNN story suggesting that Sanders has a strong lead on Clinton in WV. This is odd since I don’t see that state as a hotbed of single payer loving [email protected] When that primary is done, look at the gender breakdown of votes in addition to age. This might provide some voter demographic issues to look out for.

    The Trump candidacy is a wild card that I think clouds the best crystal balls. And who knows. If Baby Rubio finds a way to capture the Republican nomination, this will create an entirely different dynamic than a Trump candidacy. And if Rubio becomes the nominee, I don’t expect Trump to try a third party run, but I think he will do what he can to cause trouble for the Republicans, which again complicates early predictions. Things will calm down, but for now, too much speculation is futile.

  85. 85.

    Jay C

    @Aleta:

    Also, Yorkville on the Upper East Side (80s) used to be pretty Teutonic up until the 1980s: I’m sure a few of the old-timers had a brown shirt or two packed away in a trunk….

  86. 86.

    seaboogie

    The marketplace was looking for something different, and we’ll find out how that ends when we have a nominee.”

    This explains quite a lot re: the candidates and their advisors (co-grifters) in the GOP. They have no interest in governing, they just want to know if enough people buy whatever notion they are selling, so that they can land the job and report back to “corporate”.

  87. 87.

    seaboogie

    @Mnemosyne: Yay G! Does he have renewed dreams where he shows up for class, but without a shirt on? Maybe for the fellas it’s without pants….

  88. 88.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    For the night crew who got to hear all about G’s graduate school freakout last night, an update: he got his 500 words written in plenty of time for the deadline and has already gotten his grade back — 10/10.

    Very nice.

    A lot of drama ended up being nothing to worry about at all.

    I guess you have a few more sessions like this to look forward to.

  89. 89.

    Mnemosyne

    @seaboogie:

    His degree is all online (as many library science programs are these days), so it’s renewed dreams of discovering he missed deadlines he didn’t know he had or reading he didn’t know he was supposed to do and the like.

  90. 90.

    Brachiator

    @JGabriel:

    Weirdly enough, I don’t think Trump was a major factor in Jeb’s flame-out. Jeb would have failed just as spectacularly even if Trump had never entered the race. I think it was Cruz, Rubio, and, most importantly, Jeb himself, who were responsible.

    I disagree. It was Trump and Bush reacting to Trump instead of focusing on his own campaign.

    Trump has been able to label his opponents with tags that are not easily removed. So, he called Jeb low energy, and Bush whined about not needing to yell and scream. Trump mocked Bush running to his family, he criticized Dubya and forced Jeb to mumble his “kept us safe BS.” Voters cooled to Jeb early on, and he could never get a spark going while trying to deflect Trump’s barbs.

    And yeah, Jeb himself was responsible, oddly ineffectual as a campaigner.

  92. 92.

    craigie

    If he was willing to spend $25 million per delegate, hell, I’d be a delegate for that much. It’s not like I’d be worried he’d actually win…

  93. 93.

    frosty fka Bro Shotgun etc etc

    @seaboogie:

    … Maybe for the fellas it’s without pants….

    Yeah, for me it’s usually standing around in my boxers in public.

    Interesting tidbit: I had the recurring dream that I’d signed up for 5 classes and only showed up for 4 until the final. They all took place in the 1902 wing of my high school. I went back a few years ago when the district had an open house (built a new school and sold the old one) and I haven’t had the dream since.

    Finally!

  95. 95.

    Anne Laurie

    @Jay C:

    Yorkville on the Upper East Side (80s) used to be pretty Teutonic up until the 1980s: I’m sure a few of the old-timers had a brown shirt or two packed away in a trunk….

    Maybe, but quite a few of those Yorkville Germans (my family used to take the subway to visit the cheap restaurants as a special treat) were descendants of rich Jews who’d emigrated between the 1880s and the 1920s. So the brown shirts would not have been waved at community events.

    (Can’t speak to the anti-schwartze issue, since that would not have been on my youthful radar.)

  98. 98.

    Anne Laurie

    @efgoldman:

    For a couple of old farts, we sure do have fun fantasies. Does spousal unit know?

    As I mentioned in comments to an earlier post, the Spousal Unit is just happy I’m venting my bile at the Repubs to you guys, and not him.

    He’s a much gentler soul than I.

  99. 99.

    SFAW

    @efgoldman:

    Sorry. I meant to get a new one, but have you seen the price of onions in RI in February?
    Reply

    I’ll talk to Artie T, see if I can get him to open a Market Basket in the Southern Wasteland Known To Some As Vo Dilun.

  101. 101.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Percysowner: I’m so sick of anyone feeling sorry for JEB? Howard Kurtz at Talking Points Memo had a poor JEB post when he announced suspension of his campaign. Why the hell are we supposed to feel sorry for this guy? He’s still a member of one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in the country. The media line back in the day was that Pappy Bush was failed by the electorate, and now they’re all saying his dim, privileged son was visited with the same misfortune. That family doesn’t have a right to the Presidency that is yanked away from them by an undeserving electorate. They suck, and exhibit A is the failed W Presidency. We don’t have to feel sorry for them and I wish media folks would stop telling us to.

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