Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

đŸŽ¶ Those boots were made for mockin’ đŸŽ”

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Everybody saw this coming.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

Second rate reporter says what?

The willow is too close to the house.

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

Accountability, motherfuckers.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

I really should read my own blog.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Satan is real

Satan is real

by | 145 Comments

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I think what Mitt did in voting for removal was genuinely honorable and even courageous, given the amount of blowback he’ll get from wingers. I predicted at the time that he’d get no love from the professional centrists for it, not even from those who said “McCain is Churchill” every time he wrote a sternly worded tweet. As predicted….

I said it once before (on twitter) but it bears repeating: Bret Stephens is bad but he’s just the frat boy who yells dumb stuff at women, pulls Cs in his classes, and coasts through life on daddy’s money and connections. David Brooks is the fraternity president who lies to the cops about the pledge’s body they stuffed in the chimney.

One thing that I’ve had the misfortune to learn as I’ve gotten older is that some people are bad. Not bad on the outside/good on the inside, not “flawed”, just bad, irredeemably, sociopathically bad. David Brooks is one of these people.

This also bears repeating: Only one thing matters: voting out as many of these clowns in the Senate as we can. Give here to the Balloon Juice Senate fund which is split between the eventual Democratic nominees in Maine, Iowa, NC, Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado. We’ve only got a few more days of trial so trying to raise as much as I can while the sun shines. I raised the goal to 25K.

Goal Thermometer

Reader Interactions

145Comments

  2. 2.

    Jamie

    Holy hell. He’s not even pretending to live in a place even tenuously connected to the real world anymore.

  3. 3.

    West of the Rockies

    Hey, David, imagine if for the last three years Trump had not been pilfering, bullying, raping, killing, and cheating.  Imagine if he had instead been trying to help with climate change, true free trade, and such.

  5. 5.

    The Moar You Know

    an infrastructure bill or early childhood education

    Very, very certain that somewhere in that stack of bills from the House that McConnell has never looked at – and never will – there’s both an infrastructure bill and an early childhood education bill.  Would bet solid money on that.  Fuck David Brooks.  That anyone knows who he is, at all, is the most damning critique of America I can imagine.

  7. 7.

    Jerzy Russian

    Can someone give Mr. Brooks a swift kick in the nuts?  Is there a company that offers these services?   The only way forward is to make stupidity like this physically painful.

  8. 8.

    Thaddeu

    Only one thing matters: voting out as many of these clowns in the Senate as we can

    Not enough.  What Trump did needs to be dismantled.  That needs 13 on the  Supreme Court.  Otherwise that voting these clowns out will only result in an emasculated Senate, which cant change anything, because..  Supreme Court. It will be …win power, get nothing, lose, and the next guy will make Trump look like an Eisenhower.

    13 on the Court, not even 11.

  9. 9.

    Jeffro

    @West of the Rockies:  Exactly.

    Brooks’ comment is just a nicer way of saying “look what you made trumpov do”. Classic abuser mentality.

    I suspect RevengeFest2020’s big kick-off speech in a few minutes will be one for the ages. “I call on all nations of the world to investigate all Democrats, endlessly, and I call on my supporters to do whatever they like to Dems as well – it’s justified, I am your god, argle bargle dargle”

    And when we call him, and the GOP on it, they’ll just say, “Well…y’all made him do it…”

  11. 11.

    Amir Khalid

    It saddens me that, like his fellow poltroon Ross Douthat, David Brooks is still deemed worthy of two columns a week in The New York Times. I also resent that I was (and still am, n’est-ce pas?) a far better writer and thinker than either of them, but never made as much in a year as they make in a week.

  12. 12.

    la caterina

    I’d love to give but there is no mail option I can find on ActBlue.  I refuse to give online because of the resultant tsunami of emails.

  14. 14.

    Van Buren

    David Brooks would have told Germany’s  Jews that they had to work harder at getting along with the Nazis.

  15. 15.

    zhena gogolia

    @la caterina:

    I know, I have succumbed to ActBlue and my e-mail is a disaster. I know you’re supposed to create a special fake e-mail but I don’t have time for this crap. Oh well. Yesterday I added about 5 new people who are going to start e-mailing me, including Joe f-ing Manchin!

  17. 17.

    burnspbesq

    @Amir Khalid:

    I’ll write in Jurgen Klopp for Senate in the Texas Democratic primary, just to make you feel better.

    If you had a choice between a Guild D-40E and a Martin DCPA4, which would you pick?

  20. 20.

    randy khan

    Paul Krugman has responded to Brooks in his usual understated way.

    Also, apparently the House Dems actually introduced an infrastructure bill recently, to go with the several hundred other bills they have passed that are languishing on McConnell’s desk.  (Metaphorically – I’m sure he’s just dust-binned all of them.)

  21. 21.

    Dupe1970

    His comments don’t even make sense because for the first two years congress was controlled by the GOP and there were no investigations led by Dems.

  22. 22.

    mad citizen

    @Thaddeu: Well I heard a Roberts clip where he helpfully pointed out the SC keeps the front row empty so members of congress can come watch an argument.  So let’s use this space to set up a second bench for the additional justices.

  23. 23.

    zhena gogolia

    Apropos of the post title, this clip of Nancy Pelosi is a must-watch:

    Pelosi on Trump saying he doesn't believe she prays for him: "I pray hard for him b/c he's so off the track of our constitution, our values … he really needs our prayers … I do so sincerely & without anguish … I thought what he said with Romney was especially without class" pic.twitter.com/2567o64hiG— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 6, 2020

  25. 25.

    Josie

    @zhena gogolia: 
    I have started unsubscribing people the minute I get the first email from them. Otherwise, you are just inundated. I wish they realized how off putting it can be.

  26. 26.

    Barbara

    A corollary to the trope that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, is that evil includes the refusal to acknowledge the evil found in others.  People who refuse to name and oppose evil themselves are a manifestation of evil.

  28. 28.

    The Dangerman

    @Dupe1970:

    His comments don’t even make sense…

    If your goal is to sell snakeoil to the rubes, little things like “making sense” are secondary. This guy only collects a paycheck if the rubes read his stuff (shorter: he’s a whore).

  29. 29.

    schrodingers_cat

    BTW Sangh stooge Tulsi Gabbard got 15 votes in Iowa. I checked that the HSS (Sangh’s American subsidiary) has 2 chapters in Iowa, I wonder how many of them are citizens.

  32. 32.

    balconesfault

    If it weren’t for Dems holding Trump accountable for trying to destroy democracy, he would be able to make the trains run on time.

  36. 36.

    Geminid

    I applaud your efforts, and am in no way critical when I say you may be adding KS, KY, and Texas to your list later. Kansas elected Laura Kelly governor in 2018, first Democratic governor since Sebelius. The dems there have a strong Senate candidate in Barbara Boullier. And Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn are relatively unpopular incumbents. MJ Hegar and Amy McGrath are tough, independent women who can ride the anti-establishment dynamic to victory.

  38. 38.

    gene108

    @Thaddeu:

    There were unprecedented backlogs in the lower courts during the last 10 years.

    I think expanding the lower courts is justified, in order to make sure such backlogs do not happen in the future.

    The SCOTUS picks what cases they want to hear, so they are never subject to a backlog.

    Edit: A democratic Congress and Democratic President expanding the lower courts, in 2021, isn’t partisan. It’s just building backups in our judicial infrastructure, so a repeat of the last 10 years does not cripple the federal judiciary.

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    @schrodingers_cat

    Just for the record, from totals thus far reported she got 326 votes on the first round, dropped to 15 in the second round.

    Of some interest is that Biden lost 2600 votes in the second round. Source

  45. 45.

    MisterForkbeard

    Apparently Trump is about to give his “I’m amazing and innocent and perfect as it was completely proved during the totally unfair trial and investigation, so now I’m going to start government persecution of my critics and people who followed the law” speech.

    Should be a wild ride. For those who can stand to watch him talk – I’m not one of those.

  46. 46.

    Amir Khalid

    @burnspbesq:

    Alas, I don’t shop for guitars in that price range. But if I could afford it, I’d be happy with either one.

    @Gin & Tonic:

    That’s nice of you guys, but I still wish I had their money. Then maybe I could afford a Guild or a Martin.

  47. 47.

    kindness

    I feel pretty good about the actual elections that are coming (so long as Russia/Republicans don’t hack the election servers/machines).  I feel less good about our MSM.  We can’t elect them and it seems the corporate heads put these people up on their soap boxes to create/send the meme they want America to follow.  We can’t really do anything about that for the big guys.  Somehow we need to instill fear into the corporate leaders hearts because asking for common decency isn’t working.

  49. 49.

    MisterForkbeard

    @NotMax: That makes sense. Apparently he didn’t hit the 15% viability threshold in every location, so some of his initial voters would have moved to other candidates in those locations.

    I think what this indicates is that he wasn’t the 2nd choice for many people.

  51. 51.

    SFAW

    @Jerzy Russian:

    Can someone give Mr. Brooks a swift kick in the nuts?

    WTF is WRONG with you???!?!?!?!

    Only ONE person delivering only ONE kick? Now, if you want to “revise and extend” your remarks to note that “someone” actually means “a million someones, or some combination of persons and kicks totaling at least one million,” then I’ll withdraw my objection.

  53. 53.

    BR

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Somebody needs to go to one of her NH town halls and ask her some questions about why she is running against Bernie right now given that she endorsed him last time.  Ask her to explain why she would be a better president than him.  Get her on record.  And then get that video out to the Bernie folks.

  57. 57.

    The Moar You Know

    If you had a choice between a Guild D-40E and a Martin DCPA4, which would you pick?

    @burnspbesq: Not Amir but I’ve been playing for 39 years.  Worked in a few guitar shops as well.  Built acoustics for five years.  I’d go with the Martin.

    If you were looking at old/vintage stuff I would probably recommend an old Guild, but you’re not.  The new Guilds are not the same as the old stuff.  Good guitars, but not what they used to be.

    OTOH, new Martin guitars are generally superb.  I’m not a big fan of the cutaway but still that Martin wins the shootout.

  58. 58.

    Ohio Mom

    VanBuren@14: Brooks is Jewish; given his talent for forging connections with the powerful, he would have been doing his victim-blaming far outside the Reich, having had help in emigrating just in time.

    When I was a college freshman, I was introduced to Arendt’s term, “tne banality of evil.” I puzzled over that — I hardly knew what “banal” meant.

    I’ve grown into a deep understanding of what Adrendt meant. Brooks could be exhibit one for our time.

  59. 59.

    WaterGirl

    @NotMax:

    Of some interest is that Biden lost 2600 votes in the second round.

    I believe that once you have stood for a person in Round 1, you can’t change your mind unless your person wasn’t viable.

    So either somebody screwed up, or that means that 2,000 more people stood for Biden in round 1 when he wan’t viable, than chose Biden as their second choice when THEIR first choice wasn’t viable.

    edit: Or, what MisterForkbeard said at #49.

  61. 61.

    joel hanes

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Tulsi Gabbard got 15 votes in Iowa

    Bwa-ha-ha.

    Thanks for this.   For most of a year, Iowa towns above a certain size have endured huge Gabbard billboard ads, with short slogans like “a warrior’s heart”.     Many people think that Iowa Democrats are rubes, like Harold Hill’s “trouble” audience, but those rubes saw through Gabbard and Steyer and Bloomberg without much difficulty.

    And they’re so by-God stubborn they can stand touching noses for a week at a time and never see eye-to-eye

  62. 62.

    joel hanes

    @BR:

    It’s looking more and more as if it’s not going to be necessary for anyone to do anything about Gabbard except point and laugh.

  70. 70.

    germy

    These Washington Post headlines are something.

    Trump lashes out at prayer breakfast, calling Democrats ‘corrupt people’ who have ‘badly hurt our nation’

  71. 71.

    Bex

    @Ohio Mom: I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Brooks has become an (evangelical/fundamentalist) Christian one of these days.  The new wife is.

  74. 74.

    J R in WV

    Davis Brooks is not worth discussing in a valuable space like this top 10K blog. Waste of warm spit.

    But I want to talk about elections, and regulating them. We need to fix how voting in elections takes place, and here’s my take on how to do that:

    Voting must be done on paper ballots by hand, and then counted by a scanner AND by hand until those totals match. Results of the count must be secret until every last ballot has been accounted for, exceptions have been evaluated and handled appropriately and the totals are complete – nation wide.

    There must be no discussions of the vote counting, no exit polls, no entrance polls, no hypotheticals posed, nothing, until the nation wide totals are ready to be announced — and if that takes a week after the election, well, that’s OK too. Although, really, if it takes too long,  then that specific voting system needs to be rebooted with legal changes to get up to speed.

    Voting irregularities should be treated like the very serious crimes they are, with prison time for anyone involved. Rat-fucking included in that list of felonies!

    When I was a little kid — old enough to use a mechanical calculator and keep track of the totals, I helped out at the newspaper on election night, so exciting back then. Spouses were enlisted too, it was a huge job, and not a single computer involved anywhere, they didn’t really exist in common use at all yet.

    All those cable news guys will have to hold their water and present real news, like storm weather and people pushing cars on the big interstate bridges, until we KNOW for a FACT who won the elections, all of them.

    As long as people can steal money from computers — and they can do that, we know they do — they can steal elections from computers. And it’s a simple task with no need for machines or computers at all. 1, 2, 3, 4… it’s just counting !!!

  75. 75.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    You were wondering if there was some way to make Iowa results worse? Here you go.

     

    Enough is enough. In light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results, I am calling on the Iowa Democratic Party to immediately begin a recanvass.— Tom Perez (@TomPerez) February 6, 2020

  77. 77.

    J R in WV

    @burnspbesq:

    The unsubscribe button is your friend.

    This!! Burns is exactly right.

    The very first unwanted political email you receive from a Democratic candidate, use their unsubscribe link, and the emails will stop.

    If that’s too much stress for you in today’s situation I don’t know what to say. I’ve been using ActBlue for years now, and while I do get a lot of political spam, it’s all from the good guys, and I either delete it right off, or open it to use the unsubscribe option and then delete it. Done!

  80. 80.

    guachi

    Trump’s speech-thing is on the TV at work and I’m reading the captions occasionally. It’s just so rambling and repetitious. Even not being able to hear his wheezing it’s just so disjointed and sad.

    And the trained seals in the audience are lapping it up.

  81. 81.

    A Ghost To Most

    I’m concerned that you think I would even consider the opinions of either Bobo or Bedbug. FTFNYT.

  82. 82.

    Jay

    This same Treasury Department broke the law requiring the IRS to turn Trump’s tax returns over to Congress. The entire Republican Party is engaged in a conspiracy to cheat in the election and use government power to harass anyone with the temerity to challenge Trump. t.co/0x2DODiAVL— subscribe to my newsletter (@brianbeutler) February 6, 2020

  84. 84.

    Ohio Mom

    David Brooks is very Christain- curious but still considers himself a Jew. I think he has described himself as “bisexual” religiously — it’s like he invented his own brand of Jews for Jesus.

    At any rate, regarding the first comment — that back during the Nazi era, he would have been asking Jews what they did to engender such hate — Brooks would be plenty Jewish for the Nazis, no matter how much he’d claim to be moved by Jesus’s teachings.

    But as someone upthread said, enough about him.

  85. 85.

    J R in WV

    @Ohio Mom:

    Brooks is Jewish; given his talent for forging connections with the powerful, he would have been doing his victim-blaming far outside the Reich, having had help in emigrating just in time.

    He WAS Jewish, I believe he converted to some other Christian religion in order to marry his research assistant. Probably Roman Catholic, IIRC. After he tossed his wife and children into the bin. One more shot at why he’s a piece of crap…

  87. 87.

    WaterGirl

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Sorry, the extra M was my typo.

    What is a recanvas?  Just resubmitting the results, or holding another caucus?

    edit: I finally googled.  More like a recount of existing results, which normally has to be requested by a particular candidate in a close count.

  88. 88.

    Jay

    @WaterGirl:

    ratfucking elections has been crowdsourced for a while now.

    it’s something that Organizers should be aware of and take steps to guard against.

  89. 89.

    Eljai

    Spraytan blobfish is lauding people like Josh Hawley, Matt Gaetz and Gym Jordan.  It’s like a Who’s Who of depraved, oleaginous toadies.

  92. 92.

    Kent

    David Brooks is actually WORSE than say a Rush Limbaugh because he actually has tremendous influence on many in the persuadable middle as opposed to Rush who mostly just screams into his own echo chamber.

    Similarly, Susan Collins is actually worse than say Ted Cruz, because she provides the fiction that GOP policy is thoughtful and considered and centrist.

  95. 95.

    scav

    I don’t care what he calls himself: all David Brooks kneels to is a reflection of his own desires and self-interest, and he manifestly confuses his sense of self-worth with the final judgement of GOD.  It’s a large congregation.

  103. 103.

    Eljai

    Dump is talking about Steve Scalise and he said that Scalise’s wife was devastated when he was shot.  He then said something to the effect of “most wives would be like ‘I’m out of here.'”  That’s uh…telling.

  104. 104.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Can Daniel Dale get a medal for throwing himself on this hand grenade so the rest of us can go on with our lives?

     

    Trump is now talking about former Yankee Bobby Richardson, and his great range at second base, compared to the limited range Steve Scalise had after he was shot.
    — Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 6, 2020

  106. 106.

    Roger Moore

    @burnspbesq:

    The unsubscribe button is your friend.

    But it shouldn’t be necessary.  Things like ActBlue should default to not spamming contributors or selling their emails, rather than forcing people who donate to opt out.  That’s especially the case for cases like this, where a single donation gets split between multiple campaigns.

  108. 108.

    JPL

    We have weather porn on our local channels because of tornado warnings popping up east of Atlanta

  109. 109.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @satby: Thanks!

    Trae never fails to surprise me with his absolute, on the mark takes on the current issue. He’s one of those folks who never fails to make you feel at least a tiny bit better when you thought the world had ended 8 hours ago.

    We all need to get up off the ground, swat the dirt off and jump back on that gorgeous bucking horse of life right now. I for one am finding ways to lighten up, take in the incredible beauty of this life by tuning out/ignoring  the ugliness for the next few days and just hitting the reset button.

  110. 110.

    Eljai

    OMFG he just mentioned “the lovers”.  The cable networks should be ashamed for broadcasting this stream of batshitness.

  111. 111.

    Jeffro

    @Eljai:

     

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    “Steve Scalise got shot by a Lefty” is vital to the TCNJ’s “all the violence is on the Left” narrative.  It cancels out literally dozens of right-wing mass shootings, Charlottesville, the pipe-bomb-mailer, etc.

  114. 114.

    Raven Onthill

    “There is evil! It’s actual, like cement. I can’t believe it. I can’t stand it.” – Mr. Tagomi, The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick

  115. 115.

    Mnemosyne

    I sent Doug Jones $50 as a thank you for sticking with the Democrats. He has a tough election coming up in Alabama, and I hope we can keep him in his seat.

  116. 116.

    Geminid

    Trump sounds like he’s channeling Captain Queeg. All he needs are some ball bearings to roll around in his hand.

  117. 117.

    WaterGirl

    @Roger Moore:  Sorry, but that will never happen.

    Act Blue is a conduit – but all the campaigns get our information.  And they will NEVER make “no contact” the default.  Never.

    Just like when I worked for the Obama campaign and I explained that people were getting exasperated about all the phone contacts.  They said, yes, they knew that, but on balance, they got more from the contacts that it cost them in voter frustration.

  118. 118.

    mad citizen

    @J R in WV: A great plan for general elections.  I continue to think each party should run their own primaries however and whenever they want.  State and local governments should not be running primaries.

     

    Doesn’t Canada do paper ballots for their national elections?

  122. 122.

    Jay

    The FBI has elevated its assessment of the threat posed by racially motivated violent extremists in the U.S. to a national threat priority on the same footing as threats posed by foreign terrorist organizations such as ISIS and its sympathizers.t.co/aj8juUmp7I— JJ MacNab (@jjmacnab) February 6, 2020

  124. 124.

    Jay

    @mad citizen:

    yup, paper,

    and Elections Canada runs the elections and maintains the voter lists,

    you get 2 paid hours off to vote, which takes 5 -15 minutes,

    Federal Election “season” is 100 days from the time the writ drops,

    and how much you can spend, as an Individual Cantidate is fixed, if you get 3% of the vote, the Taxpayer reimburses you.

  125. 125.

    Just One More Canuck

    @mad citizen:

    Like Jay says.  I was a poll worker in the October election up here – all paper, all votes counted and reported and me home in bed within two hours after the polls closed

  126. 126.

    Kelly

    Oregon’s RWNJ are unifying against a cap and trade carbon bill. Legislative hearings on it today. Currently surrounding the Capitol Building in Salem with log trucks and other heavy diesel burners. Classes at Willamette U across the street are grinding to a halt drowned out by RWNJs leaning on air horns. The usual claims that recognizing any environmental cost will bankrupt us all. The local sawmill is giving employees time off with pay to attend. The dozen or so timber families that own sawmills and forest land throughout the state are doing all they can for a return to feudalism. Each one has a small rural community the are they barons of.

  127. 127.

    Kent

    @mad citizen:@J R in WV: A great plan for general elections.  I continue to think each party should run their own primaries however and whenever they want.  State and local governments should not be running primaries.

    The problem is that there are primary elections at the state and local level as well.  How many separate elections do you want to have and how many duplicate sets of elections equipment, monitors, clerks, poll workers, etc. do you want to have?

    In fact, interest in the national elections tends to drive turnout (coat tails) for state and local races.  So there is benefit to having them combined.

    Some countries actually have national elections agencies that centrally manage all state and local elections consistently and uniformly across the nation.  That might actually be a better model than what we have.  But isn’t going to happen in our lifetimes I don’t think.

  128. 128.

    Kent

    @Kelly: Yep, they will probably get away with it to because I don’t think the urban Dems have the courage to stand up to this vocal and powerful minority.  Despite Oregon’s reputation as a liberal enclave, business interests and polluters have actually been running the show for a very long time.

  129. 129.

    gbbalto

    @mad citizen: May be too late on a dead thread –

    Canadians typically only vote for one member in Federal or Provincial elections.  Makes the paper ballots much easier to count.

  130. 130.

    dm

    @zhena gogolia: I just started using the unsubscribe links at the bottom of all the mails.  It takes a while, but eventually things die down to the point where my mailbox actually feels kind-of lonely.

  131. 131.

    James E Powell

    @Kent:

    David Brooks is actually WORSE than say a Rush Limbaugh because he actually has tremendous influence on many in the persuadable middle as opposed to Rush who mostly just screams into his own echo chamber.

    He is probably Number One Republican among the tote-baggers. They hunger for Reasonable Republicans.

  132. 132.

    Jay

    @gbbalto:

    a lot of the “down ballot” tickets in US Elections, arn’t elected offices in Canada.

    We don’t elect our local Dog Catcher from the masses of the great unwashed. Instead, our Munincipalities hire the most qualified cantidate from a pool of qualified applicants.

    As a result, our “Dog Catchers” have degrees in Animal Sciences and Animal Behavioural Studies, rather than more money than brains and a hate on dogs.

  133. 133.

    Kent

    @Jay:

    a lot of the “down ballot” tickets in US Elections, arn’t elected offices in Canada.

    We don’t elect our local Dog Catcher from the masses of the great unwashed. Instead, our Munincipalities hire the most qualified cantidate from a pool of qualified applicants.

    As a result, our “Dog Catchers” have degrees in Animal Sciences and Animal Behavioural Studies, rather than more money than brains and a hate on dogs.

    I’ve never seen “dog catcher” on any local ballot anywhere I’ve lived.  But there are a lot of somewhat questionable spots on our local ballot like public utility district commissioners and such that are almost impossible to keep track of and sort out based on voters pamphlets.  You end up having to rely on things like endorsements.  I also have a really hard time sorting out the judges which often all sound pretty much the same

    Luckily with a mail-in balloting here in WA I can sit there in my kitchen and google away until I feel informed enough to make a choice.  It is more annoying when doing in-person voting in a crowded polling place.

  134. 134.

    gbbalto

    @Jay: Concur.  I have voted in Canada in the past. US ballots if counted by hand would take forever to tabulate.

  135. 135.

    sdhays

    @Jay: This is something I don’t think most Americans really appreciate. We have this default assumption that more elections equal more democracy, but it doesn’t really work in practice. In practice, the smaller the office, the fewer the people who actually pay any attention to that election.

    So, we get politicians in not-reallly-political positions (and thus likely less than qualified), no real benefit in accountability since no one pays attention anyway, and considerably more complex and costly elections on top of it all.

  136. 136.

    mad citizen

    @Kent: My point is that the political parties are private things.  At a base level, I don’t give a shit who the party puts forward for the general; and as a private thing (political party), why is government spending resources to accommodate/provide this service to the parties?

    Taking govt out of the primary business might force the parties to innovate how they conduct their elections, which could later cause improvements in the govt.-ran general elections.

  138. 138.

    Kent

    @mad citizen:

    @Kent: My point is that the political parties are private things.  At a base level, I don’t give a shit who the party puts forward for the general; and as a private thing (political party), why is government spending resources to accommodate/provide this service to the parties?

    Taking govt out of the primary business might force the parties to innovate how they conduct their elections, which could later cause improvements in the govt.-ran general elections.

    That’s the way things used to be done.  In fact parties didn’t even used to hold primaries, the party leaders just held a big convention and picked their candidates that way in smoke-filled back rooms where all kinds of wheeling and dealing and corruption happened behind closed doors

    State-run primary elections were the reform solution to the smoke filled back rooms.

  139. 139.

    mad citizen

    @Kent: It’s how we got Lincoln.  I don’t think in this age the parties would choose to do it in smoke-filled rooms, but who knows?

  141. 141.

    Ruckus

    @The Dangerman:

    And not a good whore either.

    Crappy presentation, crappy workmanship, leaves you totally dissatisfied with the experience. IOW less than zero satisfaction from start to finish.

  142. 142.

    Ruckus

    @kindness:

    It is of course called freedom of speech. They have the same right as you to say what they please. Doesn’t have to be truthful, anymore than what you or I say does.
    Having said that, I believe that seeing as how things are not the same as 250 years ago, that possibly we need some way to completely separate news, which should have to be factual and true, and opinion, which can be any damn thing they want to say. No idea how to make that work, just think it needs to be so.

  144. 144.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    I think what Mitt did in voting for removal was genuinely honorable and even courageous, given the amount of blowback he’ll get from wingers.

    You mean, after he bought into the whole “hate your friends and neighbors, if they’re liberal, and let me benefit from a constant stream of lies and propaganda about how your friends and neighbors hate you (because that’s why we teach you to hate them back, donchaknow)” he’s now going to be brave, because he has to reap the whirlwind he sowed?

    I’ll grant that he did the right thing, for the right reasons. And, look, I feel sorry for him.  It sucks to be part of an evil organization that shields the President from wrongdoing, while corruptly attacking his enemies. And while I’ll agree he was vastly more honorable than his colleagues, I won’t grant he did something specifically honorable, merely that he avoided dishonor. Courageous, yeah, I’ll grant – he kept watching gleefully while blood was spread in the water (remember Benghazi? His smirking “they didn’t say ‘act of terror'” on the day of the attacks is what they hinged that on), and now he’s swimming with hungry sharks, and he just scraped himself against one.

    But this was a President who tried to get a foreign government to open an investigation into two completely innocent people.

    We can assume he did it because Barr told him it was illegal for *him* to do it. So we have every reason to believe he’s abusing his power to skirt the law.

    We can note the hideous violation of the Fourth Amendment, which the Republicans have always hated, because it’s not “moar guns pewpewpew” (or however that tagline goes); but they still at least profess to care about the Constitution.

    So he violated the law, and the Constitution, for some of the reasons that should be the most terrifying to any free people: because there were people who might cause him difficulty with what he wanted (his reelection), if the people aren’t given a stream of fake propaganda (preventing them from making an honest, fair, choice). The founders would agree, it’s very, very good that Trump didn’t just try to jail his political opponents (as he’s repeatedly promised), but that’s like saying it’s good that  the armed robber hasn’t actually *shot* anyone yet.

    If it’s courage to vote to say that should have Trump removed from office, then it was cowardice and amorality that led to the situation where it took courage to make that vote.

    Look, I’ll grant you one thing: Mitt Romney Did The Right Thing. He was right; he was right for the right reasons; he did what a good and honorable man would have done. Thing is, he was the kid who realized that he couldn’t walk out of the store with Yet Another Stolen Candy Bar, and turned around, handed it back to the cashier and said “I tried to steal this, and if you want to call my parents, you should.” He did the right thing, sure. He was a “good boy” for accepting he’d done something wrong, and accepting the consequences.

    But he’s already a grown man. He doesn’t earn pride by failing to do the wrong thing anymore, especially not as he sits silently, watching the rest of his colleagues loot the store.

    Still: yes, he did the right thing; it did take courage, and it was done for honorable reasons, if the  reasons were, in fact, as stated. (You can’t trust any Republican since the Schiavo fiasco to speak honestly – the facts in the case forbade the type of hate they tried to spread, but  they spread the hate anyway.)

  145. 145.

    HeartlandLiberal

    A warning to those of you on Twitter. I just got put in time out for replying to David Brooks and calling him a “retard pundit.” I suspect because of the word “retard.” Which leaves me wondering why Donald Trump still has a Twitter account at all. But then, I did read the book “Animal Farm,” and understand the principle that some animals are more equal than other animals. Apparently.

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