Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

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

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

This fight is for everything.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

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

An almost top 10,000 blog!

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

You are here: Home / Open Threads / The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate

The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate

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193Comments

  3. 3.

    dr. bloor

    Quelle surprise.  The sooner and more often the grifting nihilists announce their plans to sabotage the next administration, the better.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    The world is at least fifty percent terrible deplorable,and that’s a conservative estimate

    We were forewarned.

  7. 7.

    dmsilev

    Was Marco Rubio in a dehydration-induced coma these past four years? Has he not seen Trump’s Cabinet?

  8. 8.

    MattF

    Took a moment to figure out what `lil Mario was going on about. But then, my Ivy League education kicked in and I got the picture.

  11. 11.

    randy khan

    Leaving aside that he’s obviously wrong, did he really prefer the rude and chaotic active participants in America’s steep decline?

  14. 14.

    Shakti

    @dmsilev: Rubio is thirsty in all the wrong ways.

    He’s probably happy he wasn’t up for reelection this year as the junior senator from Florida.

  15. 15.

    dmsilev

    While the Dow is hardly a good measure of the stock market, never mind the actual economy, Trump seems to think it’s a crucial grade on his Presidency. Therefore, I hope someone shows him this headline: Dow cracks 30,000 as transition begins

    The Dow Jones industrial average reached 30,000 points for the first time in history, after Trump authorized the government to begin the transition processes and Biden signaled his pick for treasury secretary — steps Wall Street interpreted as further progress in stabilizing the nation’s economy.

  19. 19.

    TaMara (HFG)

    Pennsylvania certified. And Tapper dropped this tidbit.

  20. 20.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I am consistently bad at predicting what the Republicans will do in their primaries, nonetheless, I am confident that Marco, who the other day was complaining about the media being unfair to Republicans, has peaked. In fact, I think he may lose the 22 Senate primary to either Matt Gaetz or Don Jr. I don’t know which of those scenarios (scenarii?) is the more revolting. And I hope the Dems have their eye on a candidate. Val Demmings? Gwen Graham?

  26. 26.

    trollhattan

    Jesus Christ, Rubio, your main task here is not to make us nostalgic for the logical prowess of Donald J. Trump. And yet, somehow….

  30. 30.

    Bluegirlfromwyo

    Since Marco’s concerned about China being part of the new normal, maybe he should get his happy butt off Twitter and have a Wal-Mart chat with his Made in China buying constituency. Oh, wait, that would require actual work.

  31. 31.

    West of the Rockies

    @Baud: 

    I’m always a bit baffled at the number of would-be presidents who overestimate their charisma, intelligence, gravitas, and appeal. Piggy Pompeo, Cruz, Rubio, et al.

  33. 33.

    Matt McIrvin

    The US right seems to be openly courting “antiwar” isolationist progressives now, and some are taking the bait. The branding of the Democrats as the party that was somehow in control during the George W. Bush administration is complete. I’m not sure what to do about it.

  35. 35.

    Amir Khalid

    I hadn’t heard a peep from Marco Rubio since he showed himself to be such a lightweight in the 2016 presidential race. What’s he been up to these past four years?

  36. 36.

    Betty Cracker

    @dm: Thank you for reminding me of that — I’d forgotten how Christie curb-stomped that smarmy little fuck-nugget. Well done, Christie! :)

  39. 39.

    azlib

    @Baud: 

    Or a lot of Trump voters who didn’t vote down ballot?

    We need to see vote totals, not just the difference.

    Is this a tell as to what will happen in Georgia? If Trump only voters stay home, it is really bad for the Republicans.

  42. 42.

    p.a.

    R Stone front group urging Georgians to write in tRump.???. Of course I want the Dems to gain the Senate, but in a better world I would soooo love to see tRump as part of Yertle’s caucus with Ds in majority. (Honestly think he would refuse to serve without the Presidential pomp.)

  43. 43.

    zzyzx

    Between PA/MI certifying and cutting off any long shot insanity hopes and the vaccines coming, even though things look so bleak right now (WA had its worst numbers by FAR yesterday), I’m starting to look at plans for late summer…

  44. 44.

    Yarrow

    The “American greatness” line is a nod to the MAGA hordes. He’s making an attempt to show he’s on their team while still trying to appear “reasonable.” He’s going to be tossed under the wheels of the Q/Parler/TrumpRepublican bus before he knows what happened.

  45. 45.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: God, I hope you’re right about Rubio peaking. I hate Rubio more than I hate Rick Scott, even though I know Scott is a far more evil and competent (and therefore, dangerous) opponent. My contempt for Rubio turned to pure loathing when he used the Pulse nightclub shooting as an excuse to jump back in the senatorial race after washing out of the presidential primary. The blood hadn’t even dried on the floor. It was one of the most breathtakingly cynical things I’ve ever heard in my life.

  46. 46.

    Uncle Cosmo

    Li’l Micro Rubio isn’t qualified to vacuum the Oval Office, much less occupy it. Even if you spotted him the latest model Roomba.

  47. 47.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @azlib:

    Is this a tell as to what will happen in Georgia? If Trump only voters stay home, it is really bad for the Republicans.

    apparently, the “write-in trump!” campaign on Parler is real, though it’s often hard for me to tell what’s parody on their side. I’d be all in on some Dem rat-fucker promoting a “Sharpies for trump!” campaign

    ohn Fugelsang @JohnFugelsang 59m
    Own A Lib, Bro #WriteInTrumpForGA

    (yes, I know Fugelsang’s not sincere here, but I think it really is a thing on their side)

  50. 50.

    SFAW

    @Jeffro:

    Rubio would prefer what, that a brain surgeon be put in charge of Housing & Urban Development?

    Libtard! He wants a rocket surgeon.

  52. 52.

    Kent

    So I actually looked them all up.  A pretty good mix from around the country.

    Avril Haines – University of Chicago (Theoretical Physics) Georgetown Law School

    Alejandro Mayorkas – UC Berkeley undergrad, Loyola Marymount (Los Angeles) Law School

    Antony Blinkin – Harvard, Columbia Law School

    Linda Thomas-Greenfield – LSU undergrad, UW-Madison MPA.

    Jake Sullivan – Yale undergrad, Rhodes Scholar, Yale Law School

    John Kerry – Yale undergrad, Boston College Law School

  60. 60.

    laura

    So what you’re saying is that Rubio will be haunting the Sunday Shows for the foreseeable future…..

  63. 63.

    Delk

    Marco, you can chug water, and brush and gargle multiple times a day but you will always have the stench of trump’s dick on your breath.

  66. 66.

    scav

    Oh, the poor dear.  I sincerely hope he extends his disdain for competence, experience and training to all his plumbing, medical and automotive needs.

  69. 69.

    Kent

    @geg6:I keep saying that I ❤️ Shapiro.  I want him for Senate and Fetterman for governor.  They are both awesome and appeal to large numbers.

    Fetterman strikes me as more of a governor type.  His degree of badassery would be kind of lost in the Senate.

  70. 70.

    LeftCoastYankee

    When you call his name, he answers “Polo?”

    As a certain wicked auntie would say: “Good thing he’s handsome.”

  72. 72.

    Chyron HR

    @Amir Khalid:

    What’s he been up to these past four years?

    Tweeting bible quotes as a display of fealty to Trump, whom he apparently believes to be a religious figure.

  75. 75.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @kaitlancollins · 5m
    With two minutes notice, the White House just announced President Trump will make remarks from the briefing room.

    is it possible that a combination of the emotional crash and the side effects of (I will believe this until it’s proven otherwise) taking those mood-boosting steroids far longer than doctors recommend have made him even crazier? We’ll soon see….

  78. 78.

    WhatsMyNym

    @zzyzx:

    WA had its worst numbers by FAR yesterday

    Double check how many days the numbers being reported are actually for.
    Also seeing higher state reported numbers for my county than what our county is reporting, and the state hasn’t responded to questions about the difference (too busy?).

  79. 79.

    TheOtherHank

    To be fair, he does have a minor point. This country’s infatuation with Ivy League educations is a mystery to me. I have worked with numerous PhD holding people over the years and the main differentiator between our Ivy League friends and people who went to (gasp!) state schools is their absolute conviction that they are better/smarter/etc than everyone around them because they went to Haaaahvad or whatever.

  80. 80.

    trollhattan

    @West of the Rockies:

    He’s got that collar-bursting angry belligerence that 70 million Trump voters have shown they love. We’ll see whether it gets him anywhere post-administration but among Republicans not named Donald Trump Senior, I think he’s the front-runner for ’24.

    Somewhere in a corn field, Ben Sasse looks at a mirror and dreams.

  81. 81.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: okay, sort of yes, sort of “never mind”

    Daniel W. Drezner @dandrezner 5m
    I swear to fucking God Trump came into the White House press room to announce that the Dow Jones had risen above 30,000.
    He spoke for maybe a minute and then left without taking questions. What a clown show.

    I guess I should be glad he didn’t declare war on Fredonia or The Grand Duchy of Fenwick

  84. 84.

    Kent

    @burnspbesq:

    Boy, lil’ Marco really wants to beat Ted Cruz for Asshole of the Year award, doesn’t he?

    Can’t be done. Louie Gohmert retired the trophy.

    Oh, but they are all different subcategories of asshole.

    Gohmert wins the mindnumbingly stupid asshole award. But he’s too stupid to actually be very damaging. He’s more of an annoyance.  He competes with Jim Inhofe and others for peak stupidity.

    Cruz wins the deviously evil asshole award. He’s so much smarter than Gohmert that he targets his assholery for maximum damage and manages to make everyone hate him, even his allies. Gohmert bangs on wood to annoy his colleagues in a hearing. Cruz shuts down the whole entire Federal government on his own.

    Rubio competes for the smarmy brown-nose asshole award but usually gets beat out by Lindsey Graham in that category.

    And, of course, they are all ruled by the alpha assholes, Trump and McConnell.

  85. 85.

    zzyzx

    @WhatsMyNym: Yeah, I’m wondering if all the insanity around Thanksgiving means that numbers won’t make any sort of sense until next week.

    We were seeing a plateau of cases (with the lag in hospitalizations/deaths to come) which would have been a hopeful sign but who knows how things will get with the holiday?

  87. 87.

    MJS

    @TaMara (HFG): PA confounds me, and I’ve lived here all my life. Our current very low-key, mild mannered Governor absolutely annihilated a Trump wannabe in 2018. I really expected Biden to do the same to Trump. I’m hoping it’s just an affinity for Trump himself among these voters, and that 2022 gets us another Democratic Governor and a Democratic Senator to go along with Casey.

  88. 88.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @zhena gogolia:

    I was astonished to find myself arguing the other day that Pence has Pompeo soundly beat in the charisma department, but there it is.

    Ah, the famous “curdled mayonnaise is better than rancid lard” discussion.

  89. 89.

    trollhattan

    @TheOtherHank:

    I suspect your trajectory coming out of a top Ivy is simply greater than from other schools, giving you a head start along a career path. I doubt voters give a shit where their candidates went to college, but the people who craft and finance those candidates certainly do.

    Secret handshakes and such.

  92. 92.

    cain

    @TheOtherHank:

    Yeah, I don’t get it either – on the other hand, all the people hiring them are from Ivy schools. You do have to wonder how many of these people get in because of their families vs academic achievement. George W. Bush comes to mind.

  93. 93.

    TheOtherHank

    @Baud: I wasn’t referring to them or even the cabinet picks. Just this assumption that operates at high levels that hiring people that went to Ivies matters. I mean look at the Supreme Court; the only one of them that didn’t go to an Ivy is Barret.

  94. 94.

    cain

    I’m ready for Joe to take the inauguration oath in a tan suit. The press is looking for a controversy – let’s start with this one!

  96. 96.

    Gvg

    @p.a.: trump is not a resident of Georgia. I don’t think he is eligible and senators can go to jail, so i don’t think he even wants it.

  97. 97.

    Kent

    @cain:I’m ready for Joe to take the inauguration oath in a tan suit. The press is looking for a controversy – let’s start with this one!

    They will probably pick some random person out of the crowd who isn’t wearing a mask and be scandalized by that.

  98. 98.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @cain: and I don’t think the Bushes even had to write a check, a la Papa Kushner and Jared. I’m sure young trump was able to transfer to Penn, besides a little boost from his brother knowing somebody in the admissions office, because word got round that the weird and taciturn slumlord from Queens was more than just a slumlord, and they hoped for some fat donations. I’m betting that bet never paid off.

  100. 100.

    TheOtherHank

    @cain: When I was in graduate school (studying molecular biology) the joke (not a joke) was that the only way to get tenure at Harvard was to have at least one degree from same. Thus the assumption that anyone that hadn’t attended Harvard and was junior faculty there was enhancing their resume in anticipation of getting tenure somewhere else.

  101. 101.

    MomSense

    My world certainly became more terrible.  My dad is in the hospital in Florida waiting to hear from the vascular surgeon about his aortic arch.

  104. 104.

    scav

    @trollhattan: Probably for a bit, but a few solid years or so of interaction builds up secret handshakes, shared jingo and shortcuts to even the differently schooled.  Especially if the otherly schooled has power.

  106. 106.

    BR

    @p.a.:

    I wonder whether some of the folks pushing the “write in” campaign actually know that since it’s a runoff there are no write in options and they are actually trying to get people to turn out and then vote for the GOPers because they have no choice.

  108. 108.

    Kent

    @cain:

    @TheOtherHank:

    Yeah, I don’t get it either – on the other hand, all the people hiring them are from Ivy schools. You do have to wonder how many of these people get in because of their families vs academic achievement. George W. Bush comes to mind.

    Part of it is actually geography.

    Washington and New York are in the east coast where private schools have always dominated because that part of the country is so much older and was established long before public universities were really even a thing.   The rest of the country is newer and has much more robust public universities than the Northeast.

    SUNY -Binghamton or U-Mass might be decent schools but they aren’t Berkeley, UCLA, or Michigan.

    If the Federal government or Wall Street were located in say, California then they would be dominated by Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, and USC grads.

  109. 109.

    BlueGuitarist

    @TaMara (HFG):

    @Baud:

    PA votes:

    Biden 3,459,041

    Trump 3,378,148

    Shapiro 3,445,311

    R for AG 3,149,434

    Shapiro larger margin,

    Biden 13.7 k more votes than Shapiro.

    But 130 k fewer votes for AG than president

    with votes for minor candidates

  110. 110.

    BR

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    This seems like a bad idea for Dems to push, and I hope folks send the message to people who are going to run this campaign/billboards/etc.  Trump attracts lots of inconsistent voters, and Dems benefit by not having him be the reason to show up to the polls.  It’s a runoff, so no write-in as I understand it, and what will happen if a bunch of Trump voters *do* show up, see there are no options for write-in — probably a fair number will vote GOP anyway.

  111. 111.

    Frank Wilhoit

    I don’t like your math.  You could put Marco Rubio in a sensory-deprivation tank and he still wouldn’t amount to 50% of anything.

    Seriously, the whole problem is nutshelled in one word in the tweet, and that word is “dependent”.  It goes without saying that I don’t know what he means by that word; and you (i.e., anyone reading this) don’t know either.  Neither do any of Rubio’s audience, and they don’t care.  The word is not a sign function.  It is a little cluster of sounds.  We are on the brink of a split between humans who have language and humans who don’t.

  113. 113.

    CaseyL

    @Betty Cracker: My understanding (I could be wrong) is that Rubio ran for his old Senate seat (which he left to run for President) when his sugar daddy Braham told him to. Braham has mentored/sponsored Rubio’s entire career, mostly to get business and tax policies he likes, and likely considers him an employee/servant.

  114. 114.

    topclimber

    MARCO LIES!!!

    Alejandro Mayorkos, pick for DHS, is not an ivy leaguer. Maybe Rubio doesn’t count him because he is not the out-of-shape white guy that Trumpkins think of when they envision a cabinet member.

  117. 117.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @TheOtherHank: There are two types of colleges:

    1. Those where the hardest part begins after matriculation, and
    2. Those where the hardest part ends with being admitted.

    The great majority of schools are the former, usually distinguishable by C-curves; the latter (Ivies and other snob-appeal institutions) by B-curves.

    Disclaimer: I got my bachelor’s at a Type 2 school (Johns Hopkins) which, due to the nature of state funding at the time and the lack of on-campus housing, was in fact fairly easy for an incoming guy (it was all guys back then) from Greater Bawlmer (who would be expected to commute from home) to get into. Many of us would snicker at the premeds, who naively thought the easiest way into the med school was via the arts & sciences school – when due to the vicious competition (NB the Hopkins equivalent of “grind” or “wonk” has always been throat, short for “cutthroat” – sabotaging of homework sets and lab assignments was not unheard of) it was probably the hardest. (FTR I majored in physics; most of my townie friends were in what’s now known as STEM disciplines.)

  118. 118.

    SFAW

    @Gvg:

    trump is not a resident of Georgia. I don’t think he is eligible

    Good. I was having unsettling visions of him winning either/both of the seats as a write-in.

  120. 120.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    “sacred number”

    Grace Segers @Grace_Segers ·22m
    President Trump just touted the success of the stock market, calling 30,000 a “sacred number.”
    In October, Trump said that if Biden is elected, “the stock market will crash.”

  123. 123.

    ALurkSupreme

    Sorry if I missed it above, but Dave Wasserman and the Cook Political Report say Biden has surpassed 80 million votes this morning.

    And an obligatory FU to Marco Rubio.

  125. 125.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Biden live, announcing his latest Cabinet/NatSec  picks. No link. I’m watching on MSNBC.

  126. 126.

    piratedan

    and Rubio never asks why is China one of the new manufacturing hubs?  labor costs, environmental protections and new modern production built from scratch versus the costs of modernization and the guys who run businesses seeking profits above all else…. ever wonder WHO those guys vote for?

    I hate this kind of bad faith bullshit that we get relentlessly from the GOP who have made it readily apparent that as far as they are concerned, taxes, good government and liberal are all epithets not concepts.

  127. 127.

    LAO

    @Uncle Cosmo: I graduated from a type 2 college too.  It was literally impossible to fail out.  If a student wasn’t doing well, the administration moved heaven and earth to provide counseling and tutoring. It was very nannish.

  128. 128.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kent:

    Washington and New York are in the east coast where private schools have always dominated because that part of the country is so much older and was established long before public universities were really even a thing.   The rest of the country is newer and has much more robust public universities than the Northeast.

    Virginia is a big exception–they have a great collection of public universities, many of which are popularly believed to be private.

  131. 131.

    WhatsMyNym

    @topclimber:

     

    MARCO LIES!!!

    Also, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, pick for U.S. Ambassador to the UN, went to Louisiana State University and a master’s degree in public administration at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

  132. 132.

    BC in Illinois

    From @JacobRubashkin

    Trump — UPenn
    Pompeo — Harvard Law
    Mnuchin — Yale
    Esper — Harvard
    Barr — Columbia
    Ross — Yale + Harvard
    Acosta — Harvard
    Azar — Dartmouth + Yale Law
    Carson — Yale
    Chao — Harvard
    Navarro — Harvard

  133. 133.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Betty Cracker: For me it was when Rubio, who’d been touted as the guy who was going to fix immigration, signed onto eliminating the jus soli citizenship clause in the 14th Amendment (which seems to be a Republican litmus test now).

  139. 139.

    Peale

    @ALurkSupreme: I wish we’d express that more. We are more troubled by the voters we didn’t have than celebrating the ones we got.  It really isn’t any wonder why the Times will send out reporters on cletus safaris. We just aren’t that interested in ourselves.

  141. 141.

    frosty

    @TaMara (HFG): The PA numbers for Shapiro could also indicate a lot of Trump voters who didn’t vote down ballot. Either way, a good omen for ’22… knock wood.

    ETA @Baud: I see we think alike. Scary, isn’t it?

  143. 143.

    Nelle

    @TheOtherHank:  A long ago friend, who was awarded a MacArthur genius grant, did his undergrad work at a state university, then grad school at Ivies. His take was that the education was equivalent. The Ivies were about connections.

  145. 145.

    WhatsMyNym

    Avril Haines, pick for Director of National Intelligence, has the most interesting educational path if Wikipedia is accurate –

    After graduating from Hunter College High School, Haines traveled to Japan for a year and enrolled in Kodokan, an elite judo institute in Tokyo. In 1988, Haines enrolled in the University of Chicago where she studied theoretical physics. While attending the University of Chicago, Haines worked repairing car engines at a mechanic shop in Hyde Park. In 1991 Haines had taken up flying lessons in New Jersey, where she met her future husband, David Davighi. She later graduated with her Bachelor of Arts in physics in 1992.

    In 1992, Haines moved to Baltimore, Maryland, and enrolled as a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins University. However, later that year, Haines dropped out and with her future husband purchased at an auction a bar in Fell’s Point, Baltimore, which had been seized in a drug raid; they turned the location into an independent bookstore and café. She named the store Adrian’s Book Cafe, after her late mother; Adrian’s realistic oil paintings filled the store. The bookstore won City Paper’s “Best Independent Bookstore” in 1997 and was known for having an unusual collection of literary offerings, local writers, erotica reading nights, and small press publications…. She served as the president of the Fell’s Point Business Association until 1998.

    In 1998, she enrolled at the Georgetown University Law Center, receiving her Juris Doctor in 2001.

  146. 146.

    Another Scott

    Replying to Rubio’s tweet at the top:

    The thing is many of them hate themselves. It’s a hell of a thing but many of them do, even now, all the, you know, the liberation is skin deep. They come up in the church and they hate themselves. It’s evident in all they do. I feel sorry for the women. https://t.co/OzAEz6VNin

    — Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) November 24, 2020

    (He hates Rubio with the heat of 1000 suns. I don’t know the full back-story.)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  147. 147.

    Jeffro

    @SFAW:

    LOL

    Half the time I use the “it ain’t rocket surgery” joke, people think I’m the idiot, which cracks me up even more.  :)

  148. 148.

    patroclus

    @Kent: Technically, it’s “Georgetown University Law Center” (or “GULC”), not Georgetown “Law School.”  I guess those of us who have degrees from GULC are the only ones that care about stuff like that – I’m happy to see that Avril Haines is a fellow alum.  And we Hoyas are not Ivy League.

  151. 151.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    David Frum having a fine time with Wee Marco’s efforts to grow from a trump pigeon to a China hawk

    David Frum @davidfrum 2h
    Let’s have no return to “normal” that leaves us dependent on China. Instead, let’s have senior White House advisers whose families sell visas to Chinese investors to rescue their crumbling real estate investments.

    This Biden team may be polite and orderly. But do any of them have the heart, guts, and sheer BALLS it takes to earn a federal criminal indictment for conspiracy to kidnap?

    If anything, I think he could have gone on a lot longer

  153. 153.

    Jeffro

    @Matt McIrvin: Virginia is a big exception–they have a great collection of public universities, many of which are popularly believed to be private.

    It’s a huge plus for the state in many ways.  Even Tech ;)

  159. 159.

    randy khan

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Virginia is a big exception–they have a great collection of public universities, many of which are popularly believed to be private.

    And then there’s New Jersey, which has Rutgers, the state university most mistaken for an Ivy League school (which, in fairness, was one of the colonial colleges).  I had a friend who went there, and when someone would say “Rutgers, isn’t that Ivy League?” to him, would reply “We’re very close to Princeton.”

  175. 175.

    Brachiator

    Biden’s cabinet picks went to Ivy League schools,have strong resumes,attend all the right conferences & will be polite & orderly caretakers of America’s decline

    Wow. It’s been a busy day and I have been away from the Internets. Good to see Little Marco and the GOP committed to bullshit.

    Challenge accepted.

  176. 176.

    Jackmac

    First reaction to Rubio’s comment was “what an asshole.”   It was also the second, third and fourth reaction.  Then I realized it’s just Little Marco being Little Marco and he should just be ignored.

  179. 179.

    NobodySpecial

    The Ivies are just the”new” nobility.

    There is a club, most of us ain’t in it, yada yada.

    Eventually it all turns into W or Trump. Entitled assholes who know nothing and learned nothing, but they got to kiss the ring.

  180. 180.

    BruceFromOhio

    Biden’s cabinet picks went to Ivy League schools,have strong resumes,attend all the right conferences & will be polite & orderly caretakers of America’s decline

    In contrast to the two-bit ratfuck soulless criminals & con men who will speed that plow RIGHT INTO A DITCH SUCK IT LIBTARDS

  182. 182.

    Barbara

    Upon reflection, this is just Lil Marco puffing out his chest and declaring that he too is man enough to run for president in 2024.  Unfortunately for him, trying to play a serious person in whatever venue, including Twitter, just makes him look ridiculous.

  184. 184.

    frosty

    @LAO: @Uncle Cosmo: I went to a school that was hard to get into and hard to graduate from. About 50% of my freshman class didn’t make it. No coddling at all.  What’s that make us? A Type 3?

  187. 187.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @The Moar You Know: I work in manufacturing and up tell Trump insourcing back to the US was a big open secret since the cost of labor and gone up so much in China since the ’00s. Then Trump starts with his big, dumb trade tariffs that only jacked our costs and did nothing to China.

    Worthless, worthless idiots all of them.

  189. 189.

    H-Bob

    @BlueGuitarist: So, like usual, Tapper’s analysis is wrong — Shapiro got fewer votes than Biden, and lots of Trump voters didn’t vote for AG.   I guess he should stick to Cletus safaris.

  190. 190.

    J R in WV

    @Amir Khalid:

    November 24, 2020 at 12:17 pm

    I hadn’t heard a peep from Marco Rubio since he showed himself to be such a lightweight in the 2016 presidential race. What’s he been up to these past four years?

    Lil’ Marco has been facilitating Trump’s destruction of the world’s first Democracy. Working hard at it, in fact.

    Little monster, he’s also spent a lot of time kissing Trump’s wet ass

    ETA: Baud, others, well said up above!!!

  191. 191.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @LAO: At the Hop, the major exceptions to B-curving were the engineering courses, which were C-curved. My conjecture as to the reason for that goes thus: In a non-engineering discipline, no Hopkins graduate could do much to embarrass his alma mater without an advanced degree, and enough Cs would keep the doofuses out of grad school & force them to seek stoop labor like public school teaching. Whereas an incompetent with a bachelor’s in engineering could create major mayhem for an employer who hired them on the strength of that Johns Hopkins sheepskin, with a concomitant downgrading of the reputation of JHU engineering programs. So engineer-wannabe nitwits got slammed with Ds and Fs until they took the hint & switched out of engineering. Many a Hoppie who emerged with a degree in psych or sosh or polly-sigh walked onto campus with his sights set on an EE or MechE.

  192. 192.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @MomSense: Let me relate my own experience, which may help you deal with the very clear concern:

    Around the turn of the millennium I convinced my PCP to check for possible aortal valve damage**. She ordered up a sonogram which found no valve damage – but the ascending arch of my aorta was twice the diameter it should’ve been.

    Next thing I knew I was being injected with iodine in preparation for a CAT scan.*** Result: Yes, it was that big; no, there was no sign either of blood leakage or of dissection (the peeling away of the inner lining of the blood vessel).

    So what now? I asked; she replied, We do it again in 3 months to see how fast it’s growing. Same result – no leakage, no dissection – and the change in diameter was zero. I had a third CAT scan 9 months later, with the same result.

    At this point we decided it wasn’t a bug but a feature, and let it go.

    A few years later I was in an ER for stomach pains, & they were about to release me when I offhandedly mentioned this episode & they all but chained me to the gurney until they could arrange a sonogram of the abdominal aorta – which showed nothing to get flustered over. And twenty-plus years on, it still isn’t.

    – – – –

    Many years ago one of my coworkers, a retired Army colonel, had an aortal aneurysm go south on him on the golf course. He passed out, but it was neither a total rupture nor a dissection large enough to block the vessel (the two conditions that cause the textbook to list the primary symptom as “sudden death”). They got him into surgery and repaired the aorta, and he recovered – he looked terrible at first, as he’d lost a lot of weight in the  hospital, but eventually filled back out, and worked a number of years before retiring again.

    Since then the sawbones have developed minimally invasive techniques for stabilizing aneurysms which have very high success rates outside of emergencies. And there is always the possibility that for Dad like me, it’s a feature-not-a-bug. The hopeful factor is that they know it’s there and can keep very close tabs on it so it never becomes an emergency. Here’s a link to a WebMD article that might be helpful.

    Best wishes for Dad & you both!

    – – – –

    ** Just FTR, a not-terribly uncommon comorbidity with the arthritis I suffered from.

    ***The iodine infusion felt to me like nothing so much as pissing my pants in a blue serge suit – I got a nice warm feeling all over but no one else noticed. (I’ve been waiting for decades for a chance to use that analogy…)

  193. 193.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @WhatsMyNym: Wow, how did I miss Adrian’s Book Cafe when I was often haunting the streets of Fells Point?!?!

    Totally cool that someone with Baltimore, Fells Point and Hopkins connections is gonna be DNI!

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