Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Fight them, without becoming them!

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

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

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

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

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

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

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

Second rate reporter says what?

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Let me file that under fuck it.

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

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

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

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

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

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / 2024 Primaries / Late Night Open Thread: Dean Phillips Is Huffing Serious Fumes

Late Night Open Thread: Dean Phillips Is Huffing Serious Fumes

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Haven’t listened to the whole thing (I’m waiting on a transcript), but Rep. Phillips seems to be spouting every half-arsed, failed ‘win the primary by force of argument!!’ slogan from 2008 / 2012 / 2016 / 2020 — from *both* sides of the aisle, but particularly the not-Democratic one.


‘I want a Common-Sense Czar’… (How’d that go for Paul Ryan, or Mitt Romney, or… ?)

But he’s a Midwestern white dude with a personal fortune! How can you cruelly dismiss a winsome fella with such bright ideas (ask his paid advisers!), just because ‘the voters’ might not yet understand that Mean Dean Green is the *only* choice against Donald Trump?!?…


Remember Jeff Weaver, Comic Book Guy, from the 2016 Sanders campaign?

Reader Interactions

97Comments

  1. 1.

    Tony Jay

    If a vanity campaign falls in the forest, does it make any sound louder than a squeaky, wet shart?

    Narrator – “Sorry, who?”

  6. 6.

    Ten Bears

    NPA ~ No Party Affiliation. Just as I measure men (and women) by the color of their hearts, Aye … choose who I vote for. If the corporate democrats, the reagan democrats, republican democrats rat-fuck Joe Biden I will not vote democrat. If they foul the best we’ve seen in sixty years I will write-in Mickey Mouse for every candidate from President to Assistant Dogcatcher in East Cupcake Idaho

    I’m done holding my nose and voting the least obnoxious …

  7. 7.

    oldster

    I just woke up from a tranquil sleep with the panicked thought that Tuberville’s blockade is going to let Trump staff the military with his own loyalists.

    Fuck. I have had three years of reduced panic, after four years of barely sleeping.

    I pray to all the gods there be that Trump never comes close to winning or close to the White House again. And why the **hell** doesn’t Schuemer break that blockade? Yes, I know he cannot just snap his fingers, yes, I know the Manchins and Sinemas make it hard. But getting nominations through should be his first priority. 

    Ughhh.  Now I’ll try to get back to sleep. It feels like 2017 again.

  8. 8.

    206inKY

    Phillips such a nothing. I worry about RFK Jr but it’s a crapshoot whether he’ll pull more from Trump or Biden.

  9. 9.

    lurker

    @oldster: part of what is amazing about the Tuberville blockade is that most of these military nominations are barely visible at the national level.  Sure, you could try to take over the military through  promotions, but the sheer number of people at the lower levels makes it hard to shape the forces that much.  There is plenty more to say about this, but it gives me some measure of comfort that any attempt to vet enough people in the military who would be capable of promotion to all of these slots and loyal to trump would take so long that the process would either collapse, or let too many competent people through.

    Unquestionably though, Tuberville is causing a big problem with what he is doing, I just do not see it benefitting trump in the way we fear it might.

  10. 10.

    Balconesfault

    “voters everywhere are giving me warm hugs, high fives, and handshakes.”

    And of course it never occurs to him to ponder why those voters are wearing MAGA gear?

  11. 11.

    Baud

    What strikes me about Philips’s campaign is how all over the place his messaging is, as AL mentioned. Usually a challenger tries to define what he stands for, what his brand is.  Deanie simply doesn’t have one.

  12. 12.

    TriassicSands

    @Baud:

    Like all vanity candidates, he’s quite simply all things for all people all the time. In short, he should be gone quite soon.

  17. 17.

    Dangerman

    What has Dean Philips done since the Herbie the Love Bug series? Oh, that was Dean Jones. Easily confuse the two of them.

  19. 19.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: ​

    What strikes me about Philips’s campaign is how all over the place his messaging is, as AL mentioned. Usually a challenger tries to define what he stands for, what his brand is. Deanie simply doesn’t have one.

    “I’ve voted with Biden 100% of the time! Has Biden even done that? No, he hasn’t! He hasn’t even voted for his own legislation. How can we support a two-faced guy like that, huh? And besides, he’s old!”​

    ETA: Anyway, the complete absence of any Democratic interest in this clown cheers me up.

  21. 21.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Anti-Biden people are a disparate bunch. Phillips’ handlers seem to be offering a cafeteria menu in hopes these different groups will find something that pleases them.

    Phillips’ problem is that at this point few of the anti-Biden people are Democrats. He started out trying to attract “Centrist Democrats” but the Blue Dogs just raised their legs and peed on him. Now Phillips and Weaver are hunting up anti-establishment Lefties, but they’re not Democrats and disdain people like Phillips.

    In 2016, Weaver helped organize an anti-establishment coalition, but it’s not there for Phillips in 2023. It’s a different party now, much less fragmented.

    There has been a consolidation since 2018 that Nancy Pelosi began and Joe Biden has continued. They did not rally the party around the “Progressive” flag as some wished, and not the “Centrist” flag either. They rallied the Democratic Party around the Pragmatism flag and it worked, which is what pragmatism is all about.

    I have to emphasize here the importance of the Georgia Senate runoffs. If just one of Senators Ossoff and Warnock had lost we’d be looking at a very different political landscape. Joe Biden’s first term would have been unproductive and demoralizing, and he’d be facing much stronger challengers now than the hapless Dean Phillips. One could say that the Phillips campaign died before it was born, on January 5th, 2021.

  22. 22.

    Rusty

    I was in Manchester NH on Saturday and happened to walk past what I am guessing is Phillips campaign headquarters.   There was a very large poster in the entranceway but little else.  I haven’t seen a single Phillips sign in the wild. The campaign is invisible at ground level and there isn’t anyone that wants the ubiquitous lawn posters that litter every yard, intersection and telephone pole here during election season.  We were there for an errand but it was the same time as the Santa 5k race and Christmas parade.  There was a Marianne Williamson fan walking through the crowd with a placard and he had rigged up his dog to have sign on each side.  The dog looked quite embarrassed, while the owner appeared like someone that favors crystals and essential oils. I have seen a handful of Williamson posters over the last months, NH has a solid base of the delusional to keep most marginal candidates hopes up for at least a little while.  I’ll be part of the Joe write in brigade next month.

  23. 23.

    Baud

    @Geminid:

    You knew it wasn’t going to end well when Philips hired both Weaver and Steve Schmidt to run his campaign.

     

     

    @Rusty:

    I wonder how the media will handle Joe winning the NH primary as a write in.

  24. 24.

    Baud

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Anyway, the complete absence of any Democratic interest in this clown cheers me up.

     
    It’s a nice palette cleanser after after the mini boomlet of interest in RFK Jr.

  25. 25.

    Geminid

    @Rusty: Thanks for the on-the-ground reporting! It made me wonder if the attraction of a No Labels Presidential candidate wiould differ much from Phillips’.

  28. 28.

    Matt McIrvin

    “Why don’t we just get all the SMART people in a room together and have them hash out the good common-sense solutions to the” argle bargle heard this nonsense decades ago.

  31. 31.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Why don’t we just get all the SMART people in a room together and have them hash out the good common-sense solutions

     
    The closest we’ve ever come to that is Balloon Juice but no one listens to us.

  32. 32.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @satby: his message was “Biden’s ooold!” but it wasn’t landing with Democrats; so now he’s flailing. As he deserves.

    We’ve grown so used to reminders that Twitter only represents a small base of voters, some of us may have forgotten that big media outlet voices are even fewer.

    The FTFNYT employs 5,800 people and the Biden is old narrative is being pushed by like a few dozen of them. Fuckem.

    ETA: The No Labels style rhetoric is especially offputting. I’m sure that Joe “Floating” Mansion is taking notes

    Especially gaulling because their ostensible reason to be is to promote interpartisan cooperation. I have never seen a healthier expression of that than under Joe Biden.

  33. 33.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: His entire actual message seems to be “only I can beat Trump! Trump will win unless you support me!” but he can’t articulate why he thinks that.

  34. 34.

    Soprano2

    @oldster: I saw articles last week that said it’s believed Tuberville is getting ready to stop his blockade except for “woke” candidates, whatever that means. It said the vote in the committee for a way to get around his blockade made him decide to end it soon. I guess we’ll see this week.

    I heard that interview with Phillips on Pod Save last week. It was good, these guys know about campaigns so they know what he’s doing is stupid, but they gave him a chance to say what he was for and why he was doing it.  He really wasn’t able to do that, because he can’t say “Biden is old and some of us are terrified that the VP will become president.”

  36. 36.

    Matt McIrvin

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation: It’s well-known that if you crudely model the electorate on a two-axis “Nolan Graph” type chart separating cultural liberalism and economic leftism, the emptiest quarter of the whole thing is “I’m fiscally conservative and socially liberal”–but it’s overrepresented among people with money, they hear it from their own social circles, and because of that, for decades they’ve convinced themselves that they are the unsung great American center. And they are also vastly overrepresented in elite professional media.

  38. 38.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Matt McIrvin:  it’s overrepresented among people with money

    I think we should kick money out of office. What’s it done for us lately?

  39. 39.

    Baud

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation:

    Especially gaulling because their ostensible reason to be is to promote interpartisan cooperation. I have never seen a healthier expression of that than under Joe Biden

     

    One of their cardinal rules is the interparty cooperation must be led by a Republican.

  40. 40.

    NotMax

    @Geminid

    “The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal is the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.”
    – Adlai Stevenson
    .

  41. 41.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Matt McIrvin: “Why don’t we just get all the SMART people in a room together and have them hash out the good common-sense solutions to the” argle bargle heard this nonsense decades ago.

    Problem is if you specifically requisition smart people, what you wind up with is a bunch of big egos. You have to find smart people where they live and work in the wild.

    FTFNYT has no interest in undertaking genius safaris, alas.

  43. 43.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Baud: One of their cardinal rules is the interparty cooperation must be led by a Republican.

    Cardinals, they can go stuff it too

    @Soprano2:  I saw articles last week that said it’s believed Tuberville is getting ready to stop his blockade except for “woke” candidates, whatever that means. It said the vote in the committee for a way to get around his blockade made him decide to end it soon. I guess we’ll see this week.

    It means candidates chosen through a “woke” selection process. Non-standard folk, ya dig?

  47. 47.

    Chris T.

    @Brachiator:

    I barely know Dean Philips from a Phillips Screwdriver.  I hope he just fades away.

    Isn’t a Philips Screwdriver a drink with no alcohol “because the vodka is too old”?

  48. 48.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @NotMax:  In taking time to learn about Cardinal Sin, I learned about Ferdinand Marcos. Lying one’s way to the top is a proven and well-worn route, isn’t it?

    @Baud: How many figs do you suppose Tommy Tuberville has for Democrat( ) members’ opinions?

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: The commonality of any particular sense says nothing of its truth or wisdom

    @ChrisT: A Phillips Screwdriver is vodka and orange laxative.

  50. 50.

    Kay

    Tim Sheehy, a lead contender for the Republican Senate nomination in Montana, said earlier this year that he wants to privatize the U.S. healthcare system, according to audio obtained by Semafor.The comments, made at an August meet-and-greet in Glasgow, Mont., were captured on an audio recording obtained by Semafor. Speaking to a group of attendees, Sheehy argued that the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies for insurance coverage and other federal health programs had inflated the cost of medical treatment.
    Sheehy did not explicitly specify whether he would favor privatizing Medicare or Medicaid. However, when asked by an attendee at the event if he would “put all healthcare into the hands of insurance companies” or include “some kind of a subsidy,” Sheehy responded by broadly criticizing the concept of health insurance.
    “I mean, healthcare worked before health insurance existed. Each town had a doctor that would drive to your house, take care of you and you’d pay him,” Sheehy said. “And guess what? It worked. It worked when you actually paid a doctor for services provided. And then we started getting into this HMO, insurance, mega-conglomerate structure.”
    The comments go further than Sheehy’s past public comments on healthcare. On his website, he blames Obamacare for higher premiums and adds that more government control, “health care has only made things worse“ but stops short of calling for a repeal.
    In a email to Semafor, a spokesman for Sheehy said it was “clear that Tim was attacking insurance companies and acknowledging our health care system is broken.” They added that Sheehy believes there needs to be “greater transparency, competition, and shopping for services in our health care system,” as well as protections for patients with pre-existing conditions.
    Asked if Sheehy supported Medicare privatization, they said: “Tim knows we must keep our commitment to every Montana senior to protect their Social Security and Medicare benefits. He believes our nation made a promise to our seniors and we must keep that promise. Full stop.”
    Sheehy, an aerospace company CEO and Navy veteran, is the top pick of GOP leaders in Washington to take on Montana’s Democratic senator, Jon Tester, in one of the key races that could determine control of the upper chamber in 2024. He is expected to face a challenge in the GOP primary from Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., but recent polls have shown Sheehy leading in their matchup. Last week, Cook Political shifted its analysis of the general election from “lean Democrat” to “toss up.”
    Sheehy’s talk of privatizing the healthcare system is the kind of rhetoric Republicans in D.C. have desperately been trying to disassociate themselves from in recent years.
    The party has largely avoided the topic of healthcare in general since their failed attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017, a politically disastrous effort that led to months of party infighting and eventually helped cost them the House. But they have been sucked back into the issue since last month thanks to Donald Trump, who has repeatedly promised that he will try to repeal and replace Obamacare again if elected for a second term.

    I bolded the weasel word statement, because everyone knows what that means, right? He’s promising only to protect Medicare for current Medicare recipients – in other words, he plans to end Medicare. I assume the donors on the Right are insisting on ending Medicare and Social Security again- that’s why we’re getting this rhetoric from their candidates.
    Health care is Democrats strongest issue. It would be a real gift if Republicans ran on it.

  53. 53.

    Anne Laurie

    @Geminid: It made me wonder if the attraction of a No Labels Presidential candidate wiould differ much from Phillips’.

    I have the suspicion that No Chances Labels, and Joe Manchin, are keeping a close eye on Dean Phillips… and hopefully crossing off an actual 2024 ‘campaign’ run as too much money for too little attention.

  54. 54.

    Another Scott

    @oldster: Others have made the point that the president doesn’t (with some exceptions) pick who gets promoted.  Do you think that Obama wanted Flynn being where he was?

    Things are moving on promotions.  For your heart’s sake, it’s probably better to find something else to worry about than TIFG stuffing the Pentagon brass.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  55. 55.

    jimmiraybob

    Wow!  He’s for common sense AND he has a personal fortune?!  That changes everything.

    Does anybody know if he sells any products that randomly blow up?  That would certainly cement my vote.

  56. 56.

    Kay

    I’d love to see a poll of young people on Medicare and Social Security – whether they understand it and if they value it. I know the conventional wisdom is they are short sighted and don’t care but it always seems so unfair to me when pols threaten to take it away and people usually respond to real or perceived unfairness. I wonder if they could be motivated on that issue, especially because many of them seem to resent the mess older people have left them. To me, threatening to take away their security when they’re older really adds insult to injury.

  57. 57.

    Matt McIrvin

    While it may not work that way (though I have little confidence that the way anything works will survive), I still think the actual purpose of Tuberville’s hold is to somehow pack the officer corps with Michael Flynns who will support an autocratic self-coup in the second Trump administration. They’re angry the military wouldn’t open fire on Democrats last time.

  59. 59.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Chris T.: Ah. (I’m not very good at cocktails.) So you have one when you’re too full of shit?

    Yes, then or if you have a screw loose.

    @Kay: This man wants to privatize health care? Well, have I got good news for him.

    Though I don’t understand how it follows from that to complain about insurance companies’ bureaucratic structures.

  62. 62.

    Geminid

    @Kay: Tim Sheehy’s the guy Republican Senate Campaign Committee head Steve Daines recruited. He’s an ex-military businessman with a prospering forest fire-fighting contractor business.

    Sheehy’s like Glenn Youngkin in that he has no political record, but instead presents a blank canvas that Daines hopes Sheehy can paint in to his own advantage. But unlike Youngkin, Sheehy will likely have a strong primary rival, the despicable Rep. Rosendale. That would be a Chamber of Commerce vs. Club for Growth fight, and the winner could be John Tester.

  64. 64.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    presents a blank canvas

    Oh, he does. He looks like “generic acceptable moderate Republican”. I tend to think people are overcomplicating the “climate” for Democrats and the big threat is not a specific opponent or issue bit instead an anti-incumbent climate because people are unhappy.

    I still think people are full of shit when they say the economy is bad. Sorry, but every single indicator of their behavior says they don’t think the economy is bad. Small business starts were way up AGAIN this past year. People who genuinely believe the economy is bad do not quit their job and start a small business.

    They’re irritable, but in a non specific way.

  65. 65.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: The pitch to young people to get rid of them has always been “they’re broke and dying, you’ll never see a penny from them anyway, so doesn’t it make you mad that they take taxes out of your paycheck to give to current recipients?” The “Ponzi scheme” attack is the most extreme version.

    It helps to realize that they were pushing that same line when I was 20 and lots of people have seen the payments start since then.

    Of course, promising to protect it for current recipients goes against this whole line of reasoning.

  67. 67.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I’d like to see someone experiment with it. I feel like if you asked young people “is it fair that older people got a public retirement and health insurance program and now politicians says young people can’t have it” – that sort of thing- the general “unfair!” response of human beings would kick in :)

  68. 68.

    Chris T.

    @Kay:

    I still think people are full of shit when they say the economy is bad.

    Of course they are. I’ve made it a small mission to make snarky comments on bsky when people respond to Krugman’s “look at all these great economic indicators” with “but gasoline is $500 a gallon because I buy Artisanal Variety” posts…

  69. 69.

    Kay

    @Chris T.:

    There should be SOME real indicator other than polling. I saw people joking on social media about the huge 500 dollar decorative Halloween skeleton economy and that’s an extreme example of what I’m talking about.

    A couple of days I had a friend tell me she and her family (grown children including grandkids) are taking a Christmas cruise – everyone paid own way- immediately after she told me “prices” were way up. Not of cruises, apparently! Now, cruises can be on the cheap end but still – this is not the behavior of people who are worried about the price of a gallon of 2%.

    The small business starts are what kill me. You have to be hopeful to start a small business!

  70. 70.

    Geminid

    @Kay: I stole that “blank canvas” line from Jeff Shapiro’s analysis of the Youngkin campaign. Shapiro is a veteran political reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

  71. 71.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: With most poll questions of the “is X good or bad?” type, a large chunk of the population is basically interpreting them as “are you a Democrat or a Republican?” and trying to give the right answer for their team. So you’re basically trying to interpret the residuals beyond that.

  72. 72.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    A successful Democrat is frightening to people.  I’ve come to realize that the number of people who are invested in the status quo is much larger than I thought.

  73. 73.

    Kay

    @Chris T.:

    I looked and sure enough…

    Next year is looking like a banner year for cruise vacations, as travelers across all income and budget levels have been booking voyages at greater volumes than even before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to U.S. cruise operators and travel agents.

    I will continue my search for real world indicators of a bad economy – so far it’s just polling.

  74. 74.

    Another Scott

    @Matt McIrvin: Indeed.

    The “Right Track / Wrong Track?” question is the poster child for that kind of question.

    “Well, I think Biden’s doing a good job on trying to fight climate change and get the government on an even keel, but the GQP scares me because they are trying to turn the country into a christianist fascist white power state.  How do I answer this question??!!”

    Similarly the old “are morals important in choosing your candidate??”

    Good polling is really hard to do.  Too many polls are clickbait.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  75. 75.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Covid messed up Trump’s ability to take credit for Obama’s work on the economy.  They see next year as another shot at doing that with Biden.

  76. 76.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: They’re mad because they can still remember what things cost them in 2021, and they know prices are a lot higher now (although if you pay attention in WalMart, you can see that lots of prices are coming down). People got used to inflation being 1-3% for years, and they’re mad that it changed. I honestly think it’s that simple. Oh, and rents got insane, and they’re mad about that too. I said in another thread that I think the eviction moratorium is one reason for higher rents, but it’s something you don’t hear about. I think landlords raised rents on people who were paying because they had people who weren’t paying who they couldn’t evict.

  78. 78.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Well, I don’t think there can ever be another good economy if the measure is “every single person has everything they desire”. I genuinely wonder how they will cover a legit downturn- where consumer spending tanks and demand dries up and lay offs start. They will have people jumping out of windows.

  79. 79.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Depends who the president is.  I just have stopped trusting any journalism when it comes to economic matters.  Or public sentiment for that matter.

    ETA: Much autocorrect fix.

  80. 80.

    Miss Bianca

    @Soprano2: And he’s a fucking *member* of Congress, so he really ought to know that. It’s inexcusable hubris, but what puts it into “point and laugh” territory is that he’s *such* an uninspiring cluck – no shred of the kind of sleazy/crazy panache that even a loser like RFK Jr possesses *some* shred of.

    Just another white guy born on third base, thinks he’s hit a triple, and stands there pouting and glaring at home base yelling at the rest of us to carry him there. PASS.

  81. 81.

    RaflW

    This person is my new BFF, responding to the very cringe Dean xitt that he’s getting ‘warm hugs and high fives’ on the campaign trail.

    Kathi @oneinquiry
    You are more mayonnaise than Pence and more defensive than DeSantis. I won’t be voting for you in the primary.

    More mayonnaise that Pence is completely brutal.

  82. 82.

    Citizen Alan

    @Matt McIrvin: What pisses me off about that idea is that the ones who usually say  such things invariably define “smart people” as “people who agree with me” and “common sense solutions” as “whatever laws I want enacted.”  If you look at it closely, that whole idea just boils down to “I should be the dictator” but with more steps.

  84. 84.

    Citizen Alan

    @Matt McIrvin: It’s also a fucking lie. Because anyone who is really socially liberal and fiscally conservative is a democrat.  I’m 54, and I can’t remember a time when either of those terms described republicans as a party.

  88. 88.

    wjca

    @Baud: I wonder how the media will handle Joe winning the NH primary as a write in.

    “Write-in candidate wins NH. Democrats in disarray!”

    But you knew that….

  89. 89.

    artem1s

    This guy is is tailor made for the ‘Green’ (420) Party. So I’m assuming Jill Stein or the Libertarian candidate has already hoovered up all those campaign dollars grift?​

  91. 91.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Citizen Alan: Very similar to “the Pundit’s Fallacy” (was that Matthew Yglesias’s term?) which is the idea that your own policy preferences are popular, and are what candidates should adopt to win elections. As a liberal who came of political age during the Reagan era this is an illusion I have NEVER had.

  92. 92.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Citizen Alan: by “fiscally conservative” they mean “I want tax cuts and deregulation and cuts to aid for poor people”. There might be some performative deficit hawkery but it doesn’t extend to income tax increases.

  94. 94.

    Paul in KY

    @Kay: And when you had any form of cancer or potentially deadly disease, he’d just leave you some morphine and ensure he received his payment then and would commiserate for a spell with your family…

  95. 95.

    Paul in KY

    @Another Scott: A President can ensure someone at the O-7 and above rank doesn’t get to where they can damage defence readiness. Pres. Obama should probably have put his thumb on the scale a bit and ensured the traitorous Flynn was in the most nobody a job someone in his rank could have (one usually given to those in disgrace & just waiting for the retirement paperwork to clear).

  96. 96.

    Paul in KY

    @Baud: I think back in late 90s before the Lewinsky thing broke. Although, when people are fat & happy, that doesn’t seem to help us either.

  97. 97.

    Geminid

    @Paul in KY: Michael Flynn was a decent intelligence officer when he had General McChrystal watching over him. Then Flynn got an independent command as head of the Defense Intelligence agency, and he quickly pissed off the officers working with him and under him. So Obama had Flynn fired.

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