step right up and try the juiceless ron desantis special, the charcoal briquette
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) May 13, 2023
Of note re where DeSantis is on Ukraine: "In private, Mr. DeSantis tried to calm supporters by noting that his statement [to Carlson] had not taken a position against aid to Ukraine." https://t.co/weL0EHpJK9
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 13, 2023
Or, at least, more than willing to scuff up the leading challenger-of-the-moment (to some peoples’ meal ticket). Easy targets on both sides for a lazy weekend evening — “Why Ron DeSantis Is Limping to the Starting Line“:
… In six short months from November to May, Mr. DeSantis’s 2024 run has faltered before it has even begun.
Allies have abandoned him. Tales of his icy interpersonal touch have spread. Donors have groused. And a legislative session in Tallahassee designed to burnish his conservative credentials has instead coincided with a drop in the polls…
Now, as Mr. DeSantis’s Tallahassee-based operation pivots to formally entering the race in the coming weeks, Mr. DeSantis and his allies are retooling for a more aggressive new phase. His staunchest supporters privately acknowledge that Mr. DeSantis needs to recalibrate a political outreach and media strategy that has allowed Mr. Trump to define the race.
Changes are afoot. Mr. DeSantis is building a strong Iowa operation. He has been calling influential Republicans in Iowa and is rolling out a large slate of state legislator endorsements before a weekend trip there.
“He definitely indicated that if he gets in, he will work exceptionally hard — nothing will be below him,” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential Iowa evangelical leader whom Mr. DeSantis hosted recently for a meal at the governor’s mansion. “I think he understands — I emphasized that Iowa’s a retail politics state. You need to shake people’s hands, look them in the eye.”
Thank you, (multiple failed gubernatorial candidate) Vander Plaats, we already had the impression that nothing would be too low for DeSquamous and his minions.
Still, his central electability pitch — MAGA without the mess — has been badly bruised.
A book tour that was supposed to have introduced him nationally was marked by missteps that deepened concerns about his readiness for the biggest stage. He took positions on two pressing domestic and international issues — abortion and the war in Ukraine — that generated second-guessing and backlash among some allies and would-be benefactors. And the moves he has made to appeal to the hard right — escalating his feud with Disney, signing a strict six-week abortion ban — have unnerved donors who are worried about the general election…
Three billionaires who are major G.O.P. donors — Steve Wynn, Ike Perlmutter and Thomas Peterffy, a past DeSantis patron who has publicly soured on him — dined recently with Vivek Ramaswamy, the 37-year-old long-shot Republican.
The early months of 2023 have exposed a central challenge for Mr. DeSantis. He needs to stitch together an unwieldy ideological coalition bridging both anti-Trump Republicans and Trump supporters who are nonetheless considering turning the page on the past president. Hitting and hugging Mr. Trump at the same time has bedeviled rivals since Senator Ted Cruz tried to do so in 2016, and Cruz veterans fill key roles in Mr. DeSantis’s campaign and his super PAC…
Florida’s Ted Cruz — what a wealth of misery in just three words!
The DeSantis team seemed to buy its own hype.
Days before the midterms, the DeSantis campaign released a video that cast his rise as ordained from on high. “On the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a protector,’” a narrator booms as Mr. DeSantis appears onscreen. “So God made a fighter.”…
Today, allies say there are few people around who are willing to tell Mr. DeSantis he’s wrong, even in private.
In late 2022, the thinking was that a decision on 2024 could wait, and Mr. Trump’s midterm hangover would linger. Mr. DeSantis published a book — “I was, you know, kind of a hot commodity,” he said of writing it — that became a best seller. And Mr. DeSantis was on the offensive, tweaking Mr. Trump with a February donor retreat held only miles from Mar-a-Lago that drew Trump contributors.
But it has been Mr. Trump who has consistently one-upped Mr. DeSantis, flying into East Palestine, Ohio, after the rail disaster there, appearing with a larger crowd in the same Iowa city days after Mr. DeSantis and swiping Florida congressional endorsements while Mr. DeSantis traveled to Washington.
One Trump endorser, Representative Lance Gooden of Texas, backed the former president only hours after attending a private group meeting with Mr. DeSantis. In an interview, Mr. Gooden likened Mr. DeSantis’s decision to delay entry until after a legislative session to the example of a past Texas governor, Rick Perry, who did the same a decade ago — and quickly flamed out of the 2012 contest.
“He’s relied, much like Rick Perry did, on local political experts in his home state that just don’t know the presidential landscape,” Mr. Gooden said…
Rick *Who*? (Oops!)
People close to Mr. Trump have been blunt in private discussions that the hits so far are just the start: If Mr. DeSantis ever appears poised to capture the nomination, the former president will do everything he can to tear him apart.
Beginning with his response to the coronavirus outbreak, Mr. DeSantis’s national rise has been uniquely powered by his ability to make the right enemies: in academia, in the news media, among liberal activists and at the White House. But Mr. Trump’s broadsides and some of his own actions have put Mr. DeSantis crosswise with the right for the first time. It has been a disorienting experience for the DeSantis operation, according to allies.
For the past three years, Mr. DeSantis has had the luxury of completely shutting out what he pejoratively brands the “national regime media” or “the corporate media” — though Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation does not, in his view, count as corporate media.
This strategy served Mr. DeSantis well in Florida. But avoiding sit-down interviews with skeptical journalists has left him out of practice as he prepares for the most intense scrutiny of his career.
“The Murdochs encapsulated him in a bubble and force-fed him to a conservative audience,” said Steve Bannon, a former strategist for Mr. Trump. “He hasn’t been scuffed up. He hasn’t had these questions put in his grill.”…
Another name no sane political candidate wants to see in any discussion concerning their chances.
Donors who contributed to Mr. DeSantis’s previous campaigns tell stories of meetings in which the candidate looked as though he would rather be anywhere else. He fiddled with his phone, showed no interest in his hosts and escaped as quickly as possible. But people who have recently met with Mr. DeSantis say he has been far more engaged. At recent Wisconsin and New Hampshire events, the governor worked the room as he had rarely done before.
The governor and his team have had internal conversations acknowledging the need for him to engage in the basics of political courtship: small talk, handshaking, eye contact…
For his part, Mr. Trump recently relished hosting the Florida House Republicans who had endorsed him…
Welcome to the Big Show, little man.
Former President Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are having dueling appearances in Iowa today.
This comes as DeSantis shows the clearest signs yet that he could be ready to formally join the Presidential race. @DashaBurns reports. pic.twitter.com/aLbPpuIzxB
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) May 13, 2023
DeSantis takes the stage at the sold out Feenstra fundraising picnic. pic.twitter.com/C7hz0Yt71Z
— Natasha Korecki (@natashakorecki) May 13, 2023
(Randy Feenstra is Steve ‘Pigmuck’ King’s factory-farm-country successor.)
“It may be that Florida is the Iowa of the southeast” DeSantis says, leaning from his last trip here that you can only gush about your own state so much when you need to win an Iowa caucus. pic.twitter.com/f6O9Yfqb6m
— Natasha Korecki (@natashakorecki) May 13, 2023
But you can *never* slather too much tongue-butter over a roomful of Iowa primary voters…
War for Ukraine Day 444: President Zelenskyy Is in Rome
Mike in NC
He really needs those silly white boots everywhere he goes, even if wearing a tux.
bbleh
Meanwhile, senior NY Times editorial staff were seething over CNN’s coup with their “town hall” show. “Yeah, they’re video, so they can do that, but how do we get some of it?!”
Several junior staff have been tasked with figuring out a way to do something similar for a print format, with the strong suggestion that failure would not bode well for their career prospects.
Keith P.
@Mike in NC: They remind me of those red video game boots that were trending a few months ago.
NotMax
That’s what happens when one’s rump in superglued to the bottom of the well.
Nelle
Thank the weather gods. TFG cancelled his dueling Iowa rally just before it began…We’ve been under a tornado watch this evening. He’ll be back.
I did note that his sparkly cheerleader, Iowa guv Kim Reynolds, was up at the DeSantis rally in NW Iowa. Hmmmm…
RaflW
I don’t know who the guy to Ron’s left is in that first, burger spatula pic, but he’s the only one of the three who appears actually happy to be there.
DeSantis shouldn’t be written off from future GOP politics. But he’s stiff as a board and unlikely to develop any warmth. Ever. Sure seems to fail the (somewhat questionable) “Would you want to have a beer with him” test.
Pudding, on the other hand?
Villago Delenda Est
Nuke the Vichy Times from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Villago Delenda Est
@Nelle: Had less to do with the weather and more to do with the shitty turnout.
karen marie
That’s hilarious coming from a Trump booster.
“Former strategist,” my ass.
karen marie
@RaflW: I have no idea who any of them are (other than Meatball) but I want to know how come the other two have steak on their spatula and DeSantis has a burger.
Is he chopped meat already?
different-church-lady
” MAGA without the mess” = Fascism without the mask.
Scout211
Oooh, DeSantis really went hard after the front runner in his speech today. Link
Ha ha. Just kidding. It was a subtle, vaguely worded possible maybe slight criticism of a unnamed person somewhere in politics. An indirect dig!
mrmoshpotato
Who’s absolutely shitty at cooking burgers – DeathSantis or Hitler?
Sanjeevs
Trump still has his troll farms and DeSantis has none.
pajaro
Maggie has a conflict of interest here that makes the Thomas family’s seem modest. Trump is her meal ticket, and, for all I know, her BFF as well. He gave her influence, not to mention a book. Of course, she would want to knock Ron down; she will obviously do the same to Biden, particularly if it’s against Trump.
mrmoshpotato
@karen marie: Exactly. Weasel word bullshit.
Baud
I usually enjoy fascist on fascist action, but I have a feeling this one will end up pretty boring.
Delk
He looks like he’s sharting in that hamburger picture.
Another Scott
@karen marie: Embiggening the picture shows that they all – helpfully – have their names embroidered on their aprons.
It looks like the grill is almost empty. I kinda (but not really) wonder if it is even hot.
I also kinda (but not really) wonder if the outfit running the photo-op is the same as the one that had the Zombie-eyed Granny Starver wash clean dishes…
Cheers,
Scott.
Ken
Has he even been in Florida in the last month? There was the overseas rainbow tour, the visits to various primary states, this rally in Iowa. Though maybe the residents are Florida are happier with him away.
Baud
I actually feel sorry for Nikki Haley.
BlueGuitarist
DeSantis had a sick, evil pro-criminal tweet about the subway killer
Reply from US Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT):
“Why is Florida’s murder rate 65% higher than New York’s murder rate? Bad luck? The humidity? Or maybe deciding to make it easy for criminals to get guns is more “pro-criminal” than making it hard for criminals to get guns.”
High crime rates in red states due to pro-criminal R policies merits frequent repetition.
link
https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1657405074061107202?cxt=HHwWhIC9hcbIpIAuAAAA
Baud
@BlueGuitarist: Good on Murphy.
Another Scott
@Baud: I assume she’s running for their Veep nomination. She can’t be delusional enough to think that she would get their Presidential nomination.
But if that “long-shot” guy actually were to win, it would indeed tank her chances for Veep…
Cheers,
Scott.
gene108
@mrmoshpotato:
Hitler didn’t cook burgers. He was vegetarian.
Anne Laurie
Pretty sure the guy in glasses is Rep. Feenstra, on whose behalf this event was held. So, yeah, he’s happy to be there (or at least knows to fake it for the cameras).
Don’t know if there’s a reason they didn’t trust DeSquamous with a good Iowa pork chop, but maybe the visitors *always* get stuck with a
meatballburger?James E Powell
@pajaro:
Remember when Maggie called Joe Biden a very flawed candidate running a flawed campaign?
Maggie & the NYT will play it cool & wait to see how the Trump v DeSantis v ??? thing works out. But the one thing that is certain is that they do whatever they can to hurt Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.
James E Powell
@Baud:
Not me. Not ever. She’s chosen to be evil.
BlueGuitarist
@Baud:
Ramaswamy wants to raise the voting age to 25.
https://apnews.com/article/vivek-ramaswamy-voting-age-2024-president-ea1429836e8f809fbf301b7b027f4ab9#
divF
@NotMax:
trollhattan
@Baud: Nikki said you smell funny and should wear pants.
Ohio Mom
@BlueGuitarist: He’s from the CincInnati area so we have gotten a few sneak peaks of Ramaswamy‘s deep thoughts. What a numbskull.
gene108
@BlueGuitarist:
To be fair, to have made enough money by 37 to kick back and run for President for a year or two, has to skew a person’s view of the world.
trollhattan
@BlueGuitarist: I just learned he exists. I’ll bet he trialed “only landowners can be voters” first before going to “25 and older.” Ah, the magic between years 24 and 25.
I’m only calling him Rama Lama Ding Dong henceforth.
SiubhanDuinne
@RaflW:
Ron always looks so … pained.
And for the love of all the gods in the pantheon, can he not afford a shirt that actually fits? I swear, if he straightened his arms, those sleeves would cover his knuckles.
Redshift
@Scout211:
Bwahahaha! Talk about a “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” line — DeSantis (like Youngkin in VA) has done nothing but “building a brand or talking on social media and virtue signaling” in his entire administration. Does anyone buy that picking up immigrants in Texas and flying them to Massachusetts is “winning and producing results” for Florida?
Redshift
Funny how when you have a party whose voters want a monster, they keep ending up with candidates who need to be trained how to act like a human…
Redshift
@trollhattan:
Yeah, I’d love to see him asked “if it’s civic virtue you think voters should have, why not just make a civics test required for everyone, rather than giving voters 25 and over a pass on that?” (On the other hand, if only people who could pass a civics test were allowed to vote in Republican primaries, he might just win the handful who would be left.)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I know this is small potatoes, but why does an omnipotent, omniscient God need a protector?
“Why does God need a starship?”
Cameron
@Redshift: Producing results, eh? It’s probably just me, but I don’t consider destroying public education and picking a pointless fight with the state’s largest employer as results to cheer about.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@BlueGuitarist:
It’s absolutely ridiculous to insist the minimum voting age should be 25. It’s been 18 for 50 years. The oldest it ever was in the 20th century was 21. You’re a legal adult at 18. You can legally drink alcohol at 21. The draft isn’t in effect now, but could always be reinstated.
A lot of voters 18-24 are engaged and informed. This wouldn’t be an issue if young voters voted the way Mr. Civic Virtue, an “anti-woke activist”, wanted them to
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Redshift:
That’s a great question. What’s so special about age 25? Why exempt everyone else above that age from military/first responder service or a civics test to vote?
Redshift
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yeah, it’s a pretty common theme among conservatives (expressed in various flavors, youth being one) that too many voters really aren’t well-informed enough to be allowed to vote. Unsurprisingly, the measure for being “well-informed” is always whether they agree with conservatives.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Setting it at 21 is, in many locales, a fairly recent undertaking.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
For someone like me, living where I am, the legal drinking age is literally “dead and gone to heaven”. So don’t you all come whining to me about having to wait for your 21st birthday. Harrumph.
divF
@NotMax: In 1984, the federal government made a drinking age of at least 21 a condition for getting federal highway funds. So all the states made the switch.
When I was in high school in the 1960’s the drinking age in DC was 18, but 21 in Virginia and Maryland. On weekends, the liquor stores in DC just over the bridges across the Potomac did a booming business with the younger set. A big evening out was to get a couple of six-packs of beer at Dixie Liquor just on the DC side of Key Bridge (Dixie Liquor is still in business at that location, to my amazement), and take them over to the Pentagon parking lot to drink them.
karen marie
@divF: In 1957, in New York State, it was 21. My mother had two kids but couldn’t go to a bar.
James E Powell
@BlueGuitarist:
He’s not being serious, he’s just trying to get attention as an innovative thinker. The political press loves silly proposals from silly fringe candidates. See, e.g., Herman Cain 9-9-9, Steve Forbes flat tax, etc.
Feathers
@divF: As someone who grew up in Virginia and got grandfathered in on the drinking age shift, I thought Virginia had one of the best solutions for drinking age. It was 18 for alcohol served by the glass by a server, 21 for takeout.
This always seemed sensible to me. A younger drinking age for booze where someone is responsible for checking that you are reasonably sober is more realistic. My younger siblings had to wait for 21. My observation was that there was more high school drinking, largely because people knew they weren’t going to wait until 21. Before, you were only waiting until you got college.
Mai Naem mobile
Is the black guy in the burger picture Byron Donalds? It looks a lot like him. If it is why the heck is there? He’s endorsed TFG for 2024.
@Nelle: there’s a conspiracy on Twitter that the weather service intentionally put out the tornado warning so that Orange Crackhead wouldn’t be able to hold his rally. Don’t ask me explain the theory.
HumboldtBlue
This fits for a Saturday night.
Mai Naem mobile
I would like to Ramaswamy win the nomination. The debate would be awesome. Biden would school him like Jerry Brown did with Neal Kashnkari.
Keith P
@gene108: Repeat after me – Vivek Ramaswamy was interested in politics from a very young age.
HumboldtBlue
I am through 106 turns on Text Twist and I can barely keep my eyes open. Even the cat is like, “yo, man, it’s time for bed.”
opiejeanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The only god (note the small g) that needs a spaceship is the Mormon one.
prostratedragon
NYC Mayor Eric Adams addresses the backs of many graduating CUNY Law students at commencement:
prostratedragon
@prostratedragon:
Background:
TriassicSands
@karen marie:
I went to high school (1961-65) in New Jersey in a town three miles from the New York State border. The drinking age in NJ was 21; in NY it was 18. (Although, I first got served when I was 15 using a learner’s permit with a big erasure on it. I looked about 9.) At 17, I arranged our senior class graduation party at the White Birch Inn (Spring Valley). Cousin Likes (Sp?) and His Organ Combo provided the music.
Our high school social life would have been very different if the drinking age in NY had been 21 in the sixties. The real problem was that every weekend countless high school kids in northern NJ would drive to NY, consume a bunch of alcohol, and then drive home.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
At least in next year’s US elections I’ll have a clearer choice than in next week’s Greek parliamentary elections. There are six major parties, which for me break down into two broad categories: four are in the category of “you’ve got a history of epically screwing things up when you’re in charge”, and two are in the category of “I wouldn’t vote for you if you had a knife to my throat” (for the record, the two parties in the latter category are Greek Solution, Trumpist/Orbanesque right-wingers, and the unironic hammer-and-sickle Communists).
JWR
Speaking of Vivek Ramaswamy, who can forget this gem…
At the 20 second mark, Ramaswamy says this:
prostratedragon
A brief but eloquent soundtrack: “Murder by Contract”.
Frankensteinbeck
@JWR:
They were allowed to bear arms, which means ‘join the military’, during the Civil War, so maybe he’s onto something. It was one of the results of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Tony Jay
@JWR:
I was reminded last night by the Twit replies to that Matt Santos list of Liberal accomplishments that what passes for ‘conservative history’ in the USA is a convoluted mish-mash of panicked denials and claims of achievement they picked up from dialogue in alternate-history fanfics.
Amir Khalid
@JWR:
Still not the wildest misunderstanding of American history I’ve heard from a president or candidate. There used to be this guy — whatsisname, Crump? Frump? — who liked to insist that he was the bestest POTUS ever — better than even Lincoln, and everyone’s favourite President.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Nothing says Iowa barbecue like a starched oxford button down shirt with rolled down sleeves
Boy, DeathSantis really has a tin ear
satby
@Tony Jay: They lifted the tenor of that speech from John F. Kennedy:
But, if by a “Liberal,” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people – their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties – someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say that I’m a “Liberal.”
trnc
Don’t worry, he’ll balance it out by lowering the gun ownership age to 10.
lowtechcyclist
As our blogfather said over at the birdsite, “he could try not being a fucking asshole” but that’s probably beyond his capacities.
lowtechcyclist
@satby:
Hell yeah!
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Amir Khalid: I will maintain until my dying day that among American presidents, Trump doesn’t rank in the top fifty. Or alternatively, whether he ranks dead last depends on whether you include Jefferson Davis.
Geminid
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: I would not include Jeff Davis, but I could include Sam Houston, the first President of Texas.
I like to stop at the Sam Houston Wayside when I’m driving Route 11 north of Lexington, Virginia. It’s near his birthplace, and next to an old brick Presbyterian church. There is a large stone of pink granite with bronze plaques from five different sponsors. One of them is the Cherokee Nation.
PaulWartenberg
DeSantis is doing more work in Iowa than he is in Florida.
And the work he IS doing in Florida is tearing down our schools, our tourism industry, and even our farms (now losing migrant workers by the hundreds).
PaulWartenberg
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
There was a recent poll by historians. trump got beat out by the guy who died in 30 days. trump wasn’t dead last, however: the two Presidents who failed in the lead-up to the Civil War (Franklin, Buchanan) and the one who fcked up Reconstruction (Andrew Johnson) ranked lower.
https://noticeatrend.blogspot.com/2021/06/history-is-already-judging-trump.html
PaulWartenberg
@lowtechcyclist:
This is yet another sign that the modern Republican Party has no idea how to even FAKE empathy anymore.
lowtechcyclist
@PaulWartenberg:
The job he’s doing on the schools is really pretty scary.
Causing problems for agriculture and the tourist industry should backfire on him, though, because it’ll get people with money pissed at him. If the migrants are afraid to work in Florida, how many Anglos are going to pick strawberries for a living? Not many African-Americans either. And Florida’s tourist industry is hardly just Disney.
LiminalOwl
@divF: Yep. When I was in college in Philadelphia, similar conditions prevailed between PA and NJ. I heard that the RAs in the dorms made lots of trips to NJ on weekends, and (it was never talked about, at least within my hearing) presumably helped fund their education with commissions on what they brought back.
Meanwhile, on-campus social life revolved around frat parties, at which grain alcohol flowed freely and ID-checking was a social fiction.
lowtechcyclist
@PaulWartenberg:
I admit I’m hardly a student of the period, but I tend to give Pierce and Buchanan some slack because it’s hard to see how anyone was going to even limit the extent of slavery and somehow forestall the Confederate Rebellion. The choice was between the rebellion on the one hand, and on the other letting the cancer not only continue but expand. Did they do noticeably worse than a replacement-level President? Pierce, no. Buchanan, yes, but not in a lasting way, I don’t think. We were headed where we were headed, regardless.
Andrew Johnson, OTOH…it’s a damn shame the Senate didn’t complete his impeachment by removing him from office.
Tony Jay
@satby:
They don’t. By ‘Liberal’ they just mean “Those unAmerican monsters who have gotten away with undermining every great Conservative accomplishment of the last two centuries. But no longer!”
Don’t need to know sweet FA about the history of anything when you believe that.
SFAW
@Tony Jay: @Tony Jay:
Gifted raconteur (and all-around swell guy)* that you are, I semi-assume you’ve read Steve Gilliard’s outstanding “I’m a fighting liberal” post from almost 20 years ago. But, on the off chance you haven’t, here it is.
It’s one of my favorite blog posts ever. I wish Steve were still around.
*I mean it, I’m not being snarky.
LiminalOwl
@PaulWartenberg: It only recently occurred to me to wonder about Domin(o)ionist involvement with current Florida politics. I haven’t seen anything at all to that effect in the news, but my anti-theocratic paranoia insists that that doesn’t prove anything.
Theocratic billionaires whose agenda lines up perfectly, and connected (IIRC) with a very under-the-radar OctOpus… Anybody have info to support or disprove my hunch?
cmorenc
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: James Buchanan (President 1856-1860) would be stiff competition for Trump as “worst” President, though of a completely different sort of awfulness. Buchanan was a surprisingly clueless bumbler (especially for someone of his long experience in other federal offices) whose clumsy moves unwittingly fueled rather than dampened the conflicts which resulted in the Civil War, whereas Trump is an arrogantly incompetent arsonist trying to set fire to the country. But Andrew Johnson could give both a run for the money (most drunkenly incompetent president, hated by everone by the end of his term).
Kayla Rudbek
@LiminalOwl: well, there’s Ave Maria law school down there and the town that the Domino’s pizza owner founded, so I would think that Opus Dei/Federalist Society has a presence in funding. I haven’t researched it so this is only a guess.
LiminalOwl
@Kayla Rudbek: Thanks, Ave Maria (town as well as university) was exactly what I was referring to. Are they explicitly OD, do you know? Opus Dei is often under the radar; the people who tried to recruit me took a long time to admit that that’s who they were. Which is why I am very curious about their not being mentioned anywhere that I’ve seen, in the current political discussion.
cain
@BlueGuitarist:
Lol so voting is as important as renting a car now eh?
How about sending them to war too or is that not a problem ?
Btw you know they are still liberal at 25 right ? Even more so they know you are fucking with them. It’s inevitable.
Kayla Rudbek
@LiminalOwl: I don’t know if they are part of Opus Dei or if they’re just sympathetic to them, but if I was in Florida and had any sort of legal authority or standing, or if I was a journalist, I’d be requesting an audit. Follow the money, as they say
Ruckus
@cmorenc:
The public at large can make some wonderful choices as pertains to actual leadership. Of course many people are woefully horrible people who become absolutely worse when given power as their general nature is crap and all they know is dig in deeper in the shit when the slightest issue arises. In the navy I met some folks who became complete and utter assholes when given any level of power whatsoever. Although they did became very good examples of what NOT to do when given any power whatsoever, so there was a bright side.
Tony Jay
@SFAW:
That’s a piece. Gillard is missed.
And you’re too kind.
Paul in KY
@SiubhanDuinne: If you asked him his favourite GOT character, he’d say ‘Ramsey Bolton’.
Paul in KY
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: I might put Davis over him!
Paul in KY
@SFAW: Fuck the fucking Yankees!