Reality 1: Biden hasn't hired a single 2016-related staffer and has no '16 fundraising apparatus yet
— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) August 1, 2015
Reality 2: If he decided to get into race, he'd not only be behind HRC in Dem Invisible Primary, but Bernie Sanders, too
— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) August 1, 2015
I'm not sure who loves Biden more right now: the press or Republicans.
— Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten) August 2, 2015
This is almost too silly to talk about, except it’s a Saturday evening in August and the moon was full last night. Maureen Dowd, in a lunge for the Peggy Noonan deluded-lady-of-a-certain-vintage market, ended her latest NYTimes column with a fanfic scenario of a dying Beau Biden, with his last breath, beseeching his old man to save our trembling nation from the horror of the Hildebeast. [No link, because really: ewww.]
But she knows her audience — not the readers, but the NYTimes management, who hate Hillary Clinton with as fierce and burning a hatred as can be mustered by a bunch of damp slugs in pricey suits. So some poor reporter had to sit down and compose a “serious” article for the front page:
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his associates have begun to actively explore a possible presidential campaign, an entry that would upend the Democratic field and deliver a direct threat to Hillary Rodham Clinton, say several people who have spoken to Mr. Biden or his closest advisers.
Mr. Biden’s advisers have started to reach out to Democratic leaders and donors who have not yet committed to Mrs. Clinton or who have grown concerned about what they see as her increasingly visible vulnerabilities as a candidate.
The conversations, often fielded by Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, Steve Ricchetti, have taken place in hushed phone calls and over quiet lunches. In most cases they have grown out of an outpouring of sympathy for the vice president since the death of his 46-year-old son, Beau, in May…
Mr. Biden’s path, should he decide to run, would not be easy. Mrs. Clinton has enormous support among Democrats inspired by the idea of electing a woman as president and her campaign has already raised millions of dollars. Mr. Biden, who is 72, has in the past proven prone to embarrassing gaffes on the campaign trail, and he would also face the critical task of building a field operation.
One Democrat with direct knowledge of the conversations described the outreach as a heady combination of donors and friends of Mr. Biden’s wanting to prop up the vice president in his darkest hours, combined with recent polls showing Mrs. Clinton’s support declining, suggesting there could be a path to the nomination for the vice president…
The only professionals who’ll go on the record as encouraging this airy daydream are Joe Trippi and Dick Harpootlian, neither of whom I would trust if they walked in soaking wet and told me it was raining.
This is American politics in the Second Gilded Age, so one never says never, but c’mon. Joe Biden is wrapping up eight years as second-in-line to the most activist President of the past fifty years, he’s just lost another child, he’s got young grandchildren who he loves dearly, he’s 72 years old, and he’s been a crusader for women’s rights since Maureen Dowd was a tipsy coed (Before you prune up your lips: she’s used that description herself). If there’s any politician who deserves not to be forced back on to the rollercoaster of another campaign, it’s Joe Biden.
Talked to a variety of sources close to BidenWorld, And so far, nothing but cold water being poured on this buzz
— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) August 1, 2015
@BrendanNyhan @NickFoxNYT America loves & trusts Joe because we know he loves & trusts us. Perfect campaign slogan. draftbiden #Biden2016
— willowbarcelona (@willowbarcelona) August 2, 2015
lamh36
Posted late in last thread, so posting again!
Attention, Atention …my new baby niece is ready to greet the world. My lil sister is now in labor!!
False alarm 3 days ago…she 8cm, and all that’s left is the pushing! Baby Zoe Tamara is coming tonight!
Peale
Oh, please, please, please, Joe, go asking Dowd for campaign donations…take her to Colorado…explain to her how those brownies really work…then take her credit cards and leave her hanging in the haze. Just call her once a day and talk about how you’re running…invite her to your “secret” big announcement in an abandoned field in Nebraska in August next to one of those giant pig effluent lakes they got there…please please please.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
My goal for tonight is to get one thing done towards marketing the book: I’m going to write the generic email asking someone to endorse Becoming Phoebe. It won’t be tailored to any particular individual; I’ll take care of that when I decide to send each one out, no more than one per night. Tomorrow, I’m going to find one blog that reviews books that I’ll solicit to review mine when the time is right.
I also plan to send out an update to the Kickstarter backers, but that’s not as stressful as the above stuff.
dmsilev
@lamh36: Congratulations!
(a bit premature, so to speak, but none the less…)
gelfling545
I would hate to see VP Biden subjected to this for no purpose. I think he would make a perfectly good president. I think he would make a terrible candidate.
NotMax
Okay, fess up. Who slipped Dowd the brown acid?
qwerty42
What is with the NYT and the Clintons? Anyone know? Is it the Sultzbergers or the management or the editors? And Modo’s eternal resentment? Is this tied to anything?
Peale
@gelfling545: Yeah. I feel like I’ve had a few opportunities to vote for Joe in a primary and have never taken him up on that offer. He doesn’t make a good “protest” candidate, even though I’ve generally liked him.
mainmata
@lamh36: Hope baby emerges healthy into a loving world; she’ll need all that loving. Best wishes.
JPL
@NotMax: Dowd hates the Clintons so it doesn’t take much for her to write a bogus column.
somethingblue
Um, “Willow Barcelona”?
Also, he/she seems to be retweeting an awful lotta things by Ron Fournier. Just sayin’.
Iowa Old Lady
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Good plan.
Someone I know who’s self publishing was saying today that she’s trying the one-month version of this:
http://www.authorservices.patchwork-press.com/netgalley-co-op/
They put your book on NetGalley for a month for $50. They vet the reviewers to weed out the people just looking for free books. I’ve never tried it, but you could give it a look.
Iowa Old Lady
@lamh36: How exciting! A whole new life.
KG
@NotMax: wasn’t me… But I didn’t stop her when I saw her drinking from the red cups
mainmata
Also, there was a time, some years ago, when MoDo was a decent NYT columnist. And then she suddenly went Demento. It was also the time she kept referencing her admittedly right-wing brother. I wonder if he twisted her thinking. Nowadays, I don’t read her at all. I read David Brooks occasionally to remind myself how not to compose an honest essay. Doubt-that is just ridiculous and an embarassment.
VidaLoca
On the subject of field operations: how many of you, and in what cities, are aware of a Sanders field operation? If so, how much infrastructure in place? How active?
schrodinger's cat
@dmsilev: Is your move complete?
Peale
@qwerty42: I don’t know. But yeah, it’s personal and it started during Bill’s term. It’s like they never got over the fact that Bill had sex outside of wedlock and got away with it. It’s not like they are some big bastion of left left liberalism that couldn’t stand his centrism. They like Cuomo, I don’t know how they feel about Shumer, but they don’t like Gillenbrand (because she’s from Upstate and is Shumer’s protege, not part of Cuomo’s “blessed” part of the party. They seemed to like Weiner enough to try to rehabilitate him with fawning articles when he tried to make a comeback, even though his wife is so closely tied to Hillary. They tried to make it seem like Harold Ford was an obvious choice to replace Gillenbrand with some wildly inaccurate reporting on a supposed popular groundswell of voices urging him to run and a lot of positive coverage for him.
I think they might have a problem with women in politics who don’t conform to the “proper first lady” role.
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat: Hah. I wish.
The main lab move is the end of August. In the mean time, I’m moving myself in bits and pieces; when I go out next week to check on the construction and so forth, I’ll take two full suitcases, and come back with them empty. Repeat again a couple of weeks later. Of course, most of my furniture and books and stuff are in storage, waiting for me to find a permanent (or at least semi-permanent) home. That’s going to wait until September or October at the earliest.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Iowa Old Lady: Thanks. I sent them an email asking when the right time to sign up would be.
trollhattan
@NotMax:
Dowd. In Denver. She took twelve.
eric
@VidaLoca: I wonder if Biden knows the folks that ran the last two field operations. The reason Joe is not running, is that it sucks to run and he has had to much suck recently. He will get to give speeches and I would bet good money he is very popular and well compensated on the speaking tour. he might even get his own tv show.
magurakurin
@VidaLoca:
There was an article a couple weeks back about how Sanders is trying to use volunteers to run his ground campaign. One of the key points was how the head of the NH office had had no contact from the Sanders campaign and didn’t want any. He don’t want anyone telling him how to run his office. A very decentralized approach. Didn’t sound promising but the article tried to make it sound as if it was a ground breaking idea in campaigning.
Clinton is way ahead of Sanders in terms of professional staffing…paid staffing. And there was an article a little ways back saying that she was spending over 200 grand a day setting up offices and hiring staff.
Sanders refuses to accept money from any Super Pac, and with the figures released today…Jeb? with over 100 million and Clinton and Walker with 20 million each…he would get absolutely eviscerated in the general election.
Kos is right with his latest diary answering his critics at his own sight. Sanders is a great guy, but he will never be president and there is no sense in getting excited about something that will never ever happen.
JPL
@mainmata: When was that? She certainly was a good columnist during the Clinton and bush years, so exactly when?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@lamh36:
Someone else asked in the other thread, and now I’m curious, too: will this be a little sister or a baby cousin for Maddie?
Germy Shoemangler
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: @Iowa Old Lady:
Writer Beware!
daverave
Patiently waiting for Right to Rise to weigh in with his take on the potential Biden presidential run and how Jeb! will benefit……
JPL
I read that Sander’s is drawing big crowds in TX and Arizona and Hillary should be concerned and I ask myself why? I’m glad that Sander’s is drawing crowds in red states but does it really matter?
dmsilev
@daverave: I think he reached the end of his shift and clocked out for the day. It’s not like that UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH pays overtime.
qwerty42
@Peale: I think they might have a problem with women in politics who don’t conform to the “proper first lady” role.
Maybe something like that. Sad – even pathetic – though doubtful they could even see themselves in so unflattering a light.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Peale: was it Raines or Keller who said about Whitewater, where there’s this much smoke there must be a fire somewhere? They really set the guilty-until-proven-innocent standard for all things Clinton.
as for Dowd, she seems to hate Hillary more than Bubba, maybe because HRC didn’t dump him? I do remember when HRC teared up in New Hampshire, allegedly feminist Dowd was one of the nastiest, citing a “woman in the NYT newsroom” (gee, I wonder who?) who asked if Hillary were going to cry if there were another 9/11, or something just as inane. And she just got progressively worse through ’08; she worked that “Obambi and the Dominatrix” schtick like a character with a catch phrase in a bad sitcom.
I think the first time she made me laugh out loud was a column about the GOP primary in (?) ’96, she opened her column with “I was hiding from “Lamar!”, about Alexander’s desperate quest for media attention. A few weeks ago I glanced at her Sunday column that opened with “I was having eggs benedict ,with duck prosciutto, with the French ambassador”, and I thought as I often do with her post Bush stuff, “Dear God, does no one love you enough to tell you?”
@trollhattan: I’m still pissed about how dishonest that column was, and I’m not even that enthusiastic a supporter of the legal pot. She lied through her fucking teeth so she could do that Ruth Marcus imitation.
mai naem mobile
I would be happy with a Clinton/Biden Biden/Clinton ticket but 1/ I don’t think it’s good for the Democratic party as far as demos 2/ I don’t see either working well with the other and 3/ I don’t see either playing second banana.
Germy Shoemangler
Why Joe Biden Should Run For President
Amy Davidson at the New Yorker. Amy is a professional HRC hater, so she thinks putting Biden in there would fuck things up with Hillary’s endorsement by Obama. Amy is a bomb thrower, but in a polite, New Yorkerish way…
magurakurin
@JPL: If you read the DKOS, then you will become concerned. But the latest NBC/Marist poll from July 26 had Clinton 29 points ahead of Sanders in Iowa and 13 points ahead in New Hampshire. Of course the spin was how Sanders is gaining. It’s like the press covering the Dem race have all become Harry Caray announcing yet another Cub’s losing season. That kind of faith is worth something though, I guess.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Germy Shoemangler: Yep. This one of the numerous reasons why I hired a small press (Trio Bookworks) not only to do the actual production of the book, but also to be my consultants throughout the process. I won’t be sending a check to anyone if Beth Wright doesn’t think it’s legit and a good idea.
Germy Shoemangler
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Why does it sound to me like she was having the ambassador as a side dish?
VidaLoca
@magurakurin:
Thanks. I was beginning to wonder if something like this might be going on.
Some things never change. Just fucking embarrassing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@magurakurin: Speaking of the Cubs…
Ricketts owns the Cubs, but the money he used to buy his kids (including his gay-rights activist, Obama bundling daughter, but not I think, the son that is governor of Nebraska) that particular toy came from Ameritrade, I think. If memory serves, the old man wanted to fund a big ad campaign about Reverend Wright in 2012 and was confused when the Romney people said for the love of god, no!
Also from Costa
anyone else less surprised that Buchanan is a Trump-head (do we have a name for them? Trumpsters?) than that Buchanan is still with us?
VidaLoca
@JPL:
I hate to say it, but I think it does matter. People in red states, people in blue states, turn out to hear what Sanders has to say because they’re curious, they’re looking for an alternative to what they’re offered day in and day out by the bog-standard candidates. And Sanders is full of all these great alternative ideas but the organization he puts together to implement them — to win the nomination and ultimately the campaign — is “groundbreaking”. Uses a “very decentralized approach”. Which means it’s a rolling clusterfuck put together by people who don’t have a clue what they’re doing. And that disorganization in turn decisively undercuts the credibility of Sanders’ ideas.
It hurts us.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Germy Shoemangler: Hey now! I have no idea what their relationship is!
Her sentence was probably less clunky than my paraphrase, but the precious name dropping and.. food-checking? gastro-bragging?… was all there, all Maureen.
ETA: I fact-checked myself, I got the dish wrong, and it didn’t open the column: “he mused, looking beautifully tailored in charcoal J. Crew and onyx cufflinks from his partner, talking over a breakfast of steamed eggs with duck prosciutto and truffles at his residence.”
trollhattan
Have never seen a UFC thingie nor cared to, but this Ronda Rousey might just change my mind.
You go, girl.
Germy Shoemangler
@trollhattan: She’s an interesting person. I read this profile of her in the NewYawker:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/07/28/mean-girl
Difficult childhood, fierce determination.
Rousey’s birth was eventful: she was choked out by the umbilical cord, which wrapped around her neck and deprived her of oxygen long enough to damage her brain. She didn’t speak her first sentence until she was six, and even then she was difficult to understand. (She speaks clearly—and quickly—now.) The family moved to North Dakota, where Rousey’s father, Ronald, practiced pronunciation with her and encouraged a growing interest in competitive swimming. In 1995, suffering from a degenerative spine injury caused by a sledding accident, Ronald Rousey committed suicide. Rousey still struggles to explain how his death affected her, and wonders if it’s even right to mention it. “I feel like I’m prostituting his memory for my own career gain,” she said, sobbing, during a U.F.C. special. “And it makes me feel like a fucking asshole.”
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
That was me :-)
And from what I’ve seen of Miss Maddie, she will be wonderful in either role.
lamh36
@SiubhanDuinne:
@Mnemosyne (tablet): cousin.
Maddie was the last lood relative baby born to my mother’s side if our family.
So Zöe is the first new baby in my family since Maddie
So Maddie is my actual cousin. Her mom is my mom’s youngeat sister.
rikyrah
Robert Costa @costareports Jul 30
Walker lands JOE RICKETTS, billionaire conservative whose family owns the Cubs. $5m super PAC haul: http://wpo.st/jlyS0
lamh36
@SiubhanDuinne: @Mnemosyne (tablet):
Zöe is the first new baby in my family since Maddie. Maddie, Zoe and one more baby 2nd cousin are so far the first babies born after my grandmother died the day after Katrina.
Suzanne
@lamh36: I love seeing your Maddie pictures on FB. what a cutie-pie. I’m sure Zoe Tamara will be just as lovely.
Little girls are just the best.
SiubhanDuinne
@lamh36:
So Maddie is Zoë’s first cousin once removed.
She will be awesome. Can’t wait to see pictures of the two of them together.
Suzanne
There was a post about this MoDo article today on Political Wire, asking the question about who her sources were. It’s a good question. She got a lot of detail.
I personally think Joe Biden is a wonderful man who I admire a great deal, and I am not being snarky or dismissive when I say that I hope more for him than another run at the Presidency. I want him to soak up his time with his grandchildren.
School starts for both my Spawns on Monday, as well as for Mr. Suzanne, who left his position after all kinds of fuckery at his last district resulted in his entire team quitting, then being begged to stay. He’s now working at the district we live in, at two schools literally three miles down the road, for better money and in a more “prestigious” district. I am so damn jealous of his commute. I walked into his new classroom on Thursday, and I almost cried. His old school had him in these horrible, dark, under-equipped classrooms with no furniture. Now he has nice space, modern technology, and the FTO gave him money for materials for his classroom. After seven years of buying all of his own materials and writing grant proposals just so he can have the tools he needs, it means a lot.
Kay
@VidaLoca:
Do you think so? I’m having trouble combining the general idea of “we need lots of candidates and lots of campaigns” with “but everyone has to win, always”. What does it matter if his supporters think he’ll win but he won’t? They want an alternative, he’s running, it’s a primary. He’ll win or he won’t. I don’t see this enormous downside risk of the Sander’s campaign, whatever it ends up being. Who will think it’s unprofessional ? Chuck Todd?
Felonius Monk
@daverave:
It’s after dark and he has taken on his other persona: Left to Fall.
Mike J
@lamh36: As a good liberal, I always think it’s better to have a sister in labor than a sister in capital.
RaflW
Chuck Todd is about as smart as a barnacle, but even he can see that Maureen “Denver Dimebag” Dowd is completely making shit up.
The NYT is an utter, hopeless embarrassment when it comes to the Clintons.
ruemara
While I would be on the Biden boat faster than you could imagine, this woman is horrible for writing this article. Disgusting.
Cckids
@lamh36: oh, congrats!! Babies are so much fun.
Kay
@VidaLoca:
I just don’t see the 10,000 people who come out to hear Sanders saying “that’s it, now that he’s lost he’s just a big loser and I’m voting for that winner, Scott Walker”. 10,000 people in a room listening to a liberal politician is a good thing. If he lasts until January whoever is the nominee will want his supporters, and will court them. Both Clinton and Obama went after John Edwards and his supporters although they all had to know he wasn’t bringing a whole lot of people to them. Sanders brings more.
RaflW
@Germy Shoemangler: I suspect she was having the eggs benedict with a side-jeroboam of champers, but that sounds bad (because it is), so she made up the duck part.
mclaren
Once again, Joe Biden.
Let’s be clear: Joseph Biden and his corrupt family are the Boss Tweeds of American politics. We can start with one of Joe Biden’s sons’ connection to the Moonie cult and their various lucrative Ponzi schemes:
Source: “Biden’s son in fund suit,” The New York Post, 31 August 2008.
Turns out Joe Biden and sons tried to buy their way into Sun Myung Moon’s financial empire only to discover, too late, that it was all a scam:
Source: series of Financial Times Alphaville articles on Biden and his corrupt dealings inside the Beltway — “Article Series – The Bidens, Paradigm and Ponta
1. Untangling floor 17, 650 5th Avenue
2. The politics of Paradigm
3. There are no safe harbours in Austin, Texas
4. Placing for Paradigm”
Source: op. cit.
Vice President Joe Biden seems like a kindly smiling friendly warmly delightful person, doesn’t he? Yet he boasts a 40% favorable rating among prospective voters vs. a 45% negative rating. Why?
Well, let’s take a look at the record…
Joe Biden is the guy whose bill created the position of Drug Czar. Joe Biden is the guy whose bill created asset forfeiture. Joe Biden never met an illegal unconstitutional wiretap or sneak-and-peek break-in by police he didn’t like. And for three long years, Joe Biden urged everyone to take “one last shot” in Iraq and keep U.S. troops there, long after it had become obvious to everyone with a nervous system that the Iraq invasion was a futile failure of epic proportions.
Joe Biden on the Don Imus show, 8/17/2006:
“We’ve got one last shot here to separate these parties [in the Iraq civil war], and you have to do it politically.”
Joe Biden, Fox News, 11/21/2005: (Should we leave Iraq right now?)
“Not immediately, no. I can understand Jack’s frustration. This is a guy who has concluded that so far we’ve handled this effort incompetently, but it seems to me that we have one last shot at
getting this right.”
Joe Biden, Charlie Rose show, 21 June 2005:
“I personally think we should not set an exit date. I personally think we should take one last shot at trying to do this the right way. I think it still can be done, although more difficult.”
Joe Biden, Face the Nation, 6/19/2004:
“We need time. There’s one last shot at getting this right in Iraq.”
Joe Biden, Hardball, 24 May 2004:
“We’ve made significant mistakes. Our one last shot to get this right, unite the world, convince the Iraqi people that this is not just a U.S. occupation, is June 30.”
Joe Biden, 11/7/2003:
“I am convinced we have one last shot at bringing the world into Iraq,” said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. “We must do everything in our power to seize it.”
One last shot…for THREE FUCKING GODDAMN YEARS. Joe Biden is Dick Cheney with a kinder gentler genocidal murder program.
Let’s move on to domestic policy. Do you like the War on Drugs? Joe Biden sure does:
Joe Biden tells ABC News: “… I think legalization [of marijuana] is a mistake. I still believe it’s a gateway drug. I’ve spent a lot of my life as chairman of the Judiciary Committee dealing with this. I think it would be a mistake to legalize.”
Joe Biden bitterly criticized George H. W. Bush for not waging a savage enough War on Drugs in 1988:
Source: “Biden,” The Agitator website, 23 August 2008.
Source: “Joe Biden Drafted the Core of the Patriot Act in 1995 … Before the Oklahoma City Bombing,” Washington’s blog, 10 December 2011.
Biden for President in 2016! More endless unwinnable foreign wars, more Orwellian panopticon mass surveillance, more terrorism indictments for nonviolent protesters expressing political views, more marijuana smokers sentenced to life in prison, more lobbying insider dealings and more shady financial ties to Moonie cultists! VOTE BIDEN 2016!!!
Kay
@mclaren:
I see you’re taking this news well, mclaren.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@mclaren: It’s one thing to be a crank, quite another to be an ill-mannered asshole.
rikyrah
hmmmmmmm
…………………………….
A Company Copes With Backlash Against the Raise That Roared
By PATRICIA COHEN
JULY 31, 2015
There are times when Dan Price feels as if he stumbled into the middle of the street with a flag and found himself at the head of a parade.
Three months ago, Mr. Price, 31, announced he was setting a new minimum salary of $70,000 at his Seattle credit card processing firm, Gravity Payments, and slashing his own million-dollar pay package to do it. He wasn’t thinking about the current political clamor over low wages or the growing gap between rich and poor, he said. He was just thinking of the 120 people who worked for him and, let’s be honest, a bit of free publicity. The idea struck him when a friend shared her worries about paying both her rent and student loans on a $40,000 salary. He realized a lot of his own employees earned that or less.
Yet almost overnight, a decision by one small-business man in the northwestern corner of the country became a swashbuckling blow against income inequality.
The move drew attention from around the world — including from some outspoken skeptics and conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, who smelled a socialist agenda — but most were enthusiastic. Talk show hosts lined up to interview Mr. Price. Job seekers by the thousands sent in résumés. He was called a “thought leader.” Harvard business professors flew out to conduct a case study. Third graders wrote him thank-you notes. Single women wanted to date him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/business/a-company-copes-with-backlash-against-the-raise-that-roared.html?_r=0
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rikyrah: Christ, the names of those SuperPACs: Unintimidated! Ending Spending! It’s like SuperPacs are boats or vanity plates for billionaire D-bags
Mike J
@Kay:
Amen. Bernie has been pretty good about going after the real enemy, Republicans. I have no problem with him as long as he continues this way.
His supporters seem like the worst of Howard Dean’s. I never held it against Mr yarrgh. I think both have similar competency in organizing and running a campaign.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I kind of love the panic. I guess “disruption” is only good if the executive pay structure stays exactly the same, huh?
He’s an innovator taking risks! We admire that, right? :)
mclaren
Joe Biden and his family are the bribery geysers of U.S. politics — the corruption equivalent of Old Faithful. No matter how much crony-capitalist insider dealing you discover about the Biden family, no matter how many thinly-disguised bribes you unearth, more layers remain…
Joe Biden’s shady real estate dealings — how he hides his immense wealth in land deals reminiscent of the way rich inner city drug kingpins hide their assets.
Source: “9 Questions To Ask About Biden’s Work With A Gas Company In Ukraine,” The Federalist website, 13 May 2014.
Source: “Hunter Biden’s new job at a Ukrainian gas company is a problem for U.S. soft power,” The Washington Post, 14 May 2014.
And therrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre you have it — Joe Biden’s campaign slogan!
VOTE BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT 2016: NEPOTISTIC AT BEST, NEFARIOUS AT WORST
MikeBoyScout
If we’re going to talk ‘draft’ on this sultry Saturday evening, let’s talk draft beer.
Hefeweizen?
Pilsner? or
Ale?
mclaren
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Absolutely. Nothing says “crank” like quotes from The Washington Post.
Kay
@Mike J:
I think they’re like all supporters everywhere. You recall the Obama-Clinton supporter wars, I’m sure.
That got..pretty heated :)
I got an email in the middle of it where a woman I know told me I’m a “woman who hates women” because I was running a county women’s group and wasn’t a Clinton supporter.
If Sanders hangs in Hillary Clinton will do elaborate outreach to his supporters, particularly if they’re actually organizing in some of these states and have lists of volunteers and voters.
Mike J
@MikeBoyScout:
Currently have a 12 pack of pyramid in the fridge. For summer, hefeweizen is my favorite. I do occasionally get a Mac & Jack’s African Amber instead, but I mostly stick to the lovely wheat beer in the summer. At 5.2abv, Pyramid is close to being a session beer. I think the lemon you should add dilutes it enough to qualify.
Tree With Water
This can’t be! Not in Texas..
“Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) has been indicted by a grand jury, multiple outlets reported on Saturday.
The indictments were handed down on Tuesday and will be unsealed Monday. Paxton faces three felony charges: two counts of first-degree securities fraud and a third-degree charge of failing to register with the state securities board, The New York Times reported..”.
RaflW
@rikyrah: From the article:
Good lord in heavenly pasta sauce, some people are stupid. A private, for profit business giving people raises is not communism! It’s not even socialism. Maybe it won’t work. But FFS it is capitalism. I heard the CEO dude on the radio the other day, he is doing the right thing but with an eye to having it be both a market advantage and, ultimately, a productivity bonanza. He acknowledges it might not work. But he’s being damn entrepreneurial, okay?
We really do have some of the most idiotic people in this country of ours.
RaflW
@Mike J: I’ve been sober 13 years now, but I do enjoy a brew from time to time. I was on a Lufthansa flight last summer and lo and behold: Erdinger Weissbrau N.A.! I was so tickled I had two. And I didn’t have to call my sponsor. :)
mclaren
@Kay:
Game theory and conventional mainstream economics says it’s impossible for that executive to do what he just did. Game theory requires that each player maximize his economic utility in a Preto-efficient Nash equilibrium, which means paying employees as little as possible.
Of course, it turns out game theory is garbage whose predictions systematically violate what real people actually do in the real world, because when the original RAND researchers tested game theory 60 years ago on their secretaries, t he secretaries did exactly the opposite of what game theory predicted they’d do. The secretaries conspired to share their winnings rather htan betray one another.
And of course when researchers more recently tested The Prisoner’s Dilemma on actual prisoners, once again they found that prisoners always shared, rather than betraying one another as game theory predicts.
It transpires that game theory was created by a paranoid schizophrenic, John Nash, who later admitted that his mental illness led him to believe that everyone was as paranoid as he was and that all people would betray one another, given the chance.
Source: “Economists finally test prisoner’s dilemma on prisoners ,” The Los Angeles Times, 25 July 2013.
And it turns out that a long series of economic studies going back 40 years prove that raising the minimum wage increases profits and grows businesses instead of hurting their profits.
Source: the crackpot fringe website U.S. Department of Labor (since I’m a crank, I cite these kinds of shady bogus disreputable sources for my obviously unreliable information)
mclaren
@RaflW:
Permit me to demur, sir. Every since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, capitalism has been redefined to mean “FUCK YOU, BUDDY, I’M GETTING MINE!”
Once upon a time, “free enterprise” meant a regulated market operating to bring buyers and sellers together at an optimal price point. Today, “free enterprise” means “standing on a drowning man’s shoulders to keep your head above water.”
Mike J
@RaflW: I like flying European airlines for just that reason. They’ll serve you what people in their home country like. Every time I fly SAS, fish is a meal option, never had it offered on a US carrier. Likewise, German beer on Lufthansa.
mclaren
@Kay:
This is the result of the delusion that “America is a center-right nation” and “Washington is wired for Republican control.”
The fear here among Democratic professional campaign organizers is that Sanders will push Hillary so far to the left that she won’t be able to win. Because the average American voter really, truly wants to abolish the minimum wage and phase out medicare and shut down public schools and replace them with voucherized private for-profit K-12 schools.
Unbelievable horseshit, in short.
But the allegedly savvy realpolitik Democratic beltway insiders keep spewing this garbage.
Tree With Water
“If society continues to overlook this witches’ brew of jury tampering, media leaks and freshman prosecutors, we may wake up to find the office of the attorney general of Texas at the mercy of two criminal defense attorneys who take checks from the very drug cartel leaders and child molesters the attorney general tries to imprison..”.
So says a spokesman for the attorney general of Texas. Looks like the dirty, stinking hippies of the Texas legal establishment have been put on official notice that they’re in for a fight.
Tree With Water
@Mike J: I once knew an Hungarian who had been rescued by Raul Wallenberg. He flew Lufthansa on business trips, which naturally surprised me. “They have the best planes and service, goddamn them” he said by way of explanation. I didn’t know him very well, but figure today he must have been a glutton for creature comforts. I can’t imagine any other reason.
Librarian
@mclaren: The actual founder of game theory was John von Neumann. not John Nash.
KG
Some times, I think I’ve delved completely into cynism and a belief that everything is fucked up and bullshit. Then I come here and see some comments and realize that I am somehow still an optimist
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think Twitter Nixon is on to something here, we’ll see
Oddly enough, I think Hillary’s a bit ambivalent too
trollhattan
@Kay:
I think of them more as the Boss Houndstooths of ‘Murkin polytiks.
In any case, I wouldn’t wish the presidency on Handsome Joe. He’s done his time in service of his country, suffered grievous losses that would crush lesser people like myself, and deserves some time with his family while he can still enjoy them. Presidential run is not happening and we can table that notion.
Also, too, if it meant the resurrection of Onion Joe I’d demand he run. Just sayin’.
mclaren
@qwerty42:
My own personal suspicion is that this is a classic case of institutional Cover Your Ass on a giant level.
The NYT bought into the bogus “leaks” and misleading talk-radio B.S. about the Clintons back in the early days of the internet, before journalists fully understood that “On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog.” As a result, the NYT began reporting on the crazy claims being made about the Clintons in the mid-90s as a story, unintentionally legitimizing the actual crazy claims themselves.
By the time editorial staff at the NYT woke up to the fact that all the “where there’s smoke, there must be fire” mantra about the Clinton was made-up nonsense without a shred of truth to it, the NYT own reputation had become so invested in these phoney investigations of the Clintons that the NYT couldn’t retract without fatal damage to its own credibility.
It’s the same dynamic at work in an obviously murderous unjustifed police shooting. Once the cop murders someone and the initial investigation gets botched, the police department has to line up behind the murderous killer cop or the entire department suffers a fatal hit to its reputation.
We see the exact same cover-your-ass dynamic writ large in the worthless bogus Global War on Terror. Once the mainstream press and hte beltway establishment lined up behind the Drunk Driving C Student and his torturer sidekick Cheney, everyone who supported the Global War on Terror (including all the institutional insider Democrats) would suffer such fatal damage to their reputations and credibility that they had to keep the lie going.
“If you screw up, cover your ass by doubling down” is the iron rule for all large institutions. I see no reason to believe The New York Times is an exception.
James E Powell
@Peale:
It goes back to Bill Clinton’s ’92 campaign, but I have no clue as to the root causes. Some person or persons at NYT made a conscious decision to push the Whitewater bullshit scandal despite knowing that there was nothing there. Did anyone there ever apologize for it?
I get the sense that every time they go after Bill or Hillary and fail the editors and reporters resolve, once more, to get back at them for it. Is there any doubt that people at NYT are more angry at Hillary for being innocent of what they claimed than they are at the person who fed them the bullshit story?
Uncle Cosmo
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
FTFY.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Ian McShane is joining the cast of Game of Thrones. I hope that cocksucker is playing fucking Albert Swearengen
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@mclaren: Christ, I thought I was the one writing a novel.
mclaren
@Librarian:
Oh, try again:
Technically, it’s not the actual Nobel Prize, but Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Same difference though.
You definitely need to write a strongly worded letter to the Sveriges Riksbank instructing them to retract their prize.
Let us know how that turns out, m’kay?
mclaren
@efgoldman:
Yes, pointing people to shady bogus sources like The New York Post and The Washington Post is “trolling.”
I think at this point we need a new Balloon Juice tag: “Reality is the worst form of trolling.”
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Saw that. Al and Wu are going to absolutely nail those San Francisco cocksucking White Walkers and never have to leave The Mint.
Dear lord I so wanted them to film the Deadwood last season. I’d trade three dragon eggs for that.
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He’s a Bush. He expects for it to be given to him. Plain and simple. He’s heard all the time that he is the ‘smart one’. So, if Shrub could be President, so can he.
He truly gives off the ‘it’s my turn, so go sit down’.
Librarian
@mclaren: Nash may have won the Nobel, but von Neumann began developing game theory in the 1920s, before Nash was even born. You try again.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@mclaren: Uh, no. John von Neumann published his paper that launched game theory as an independent field in 1928, the same year Nash was born.
mclaren
@James E Powell:
As I recall, the NYT actually tried to make the tissue-thin distinction that they were covering the craziness of the Whitewater accusations as a story, not the accusations themselves. But this distinction got lost because of Lakoff’s framing problems — psychological research shows that denials of accusations actually reinforce belief in the accusations themselves because the denial reinforces the framing mindset.
Source: “I Don’t Want to Be Right,” The New Yorker, 16 May 2014.
And once the NYT covered anything related to the Whitewater bullshit, that gave an undeserved aura of legitimacy of the entire issue and it became open season on the Clintons and Whitewater. So Repubs in congress started holding hearings, using the NYT articles as justification.
The whole mob psychology of it is deeply depressing. Once a lynch mob gets geared up, you can’t stop ’em by shouting facts. At that point, it’s too late.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@efgoldman: s/he used to, at least sometimes, have the courtesy to wait until threads were dead and rotting to post the seven feet of spew that no one reads
mclaren
@efgoldman:
You may find that some people may take you seriously if you (a) provide some evidence and logic to refute what other people are saying, instead of making vague accusations without providing a shred of proof and (b) Maybe don’t make yourself an object of ridicule by complaining every time a post is longer than a 144-character tweet.
Bottom line:
;ts,cts (too shallow, can’t take seriously)
RK
“The mathematical theory of games was invented by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern.” Or so says the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy.
Just Say Joe!
I’m Sidin’ With Biden!
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: You frequently misquote things. You don’t get nuance at all. And that is just a start. People not taking you seriously is a reasonable move.
Mike E
Medication: how does it fucking work?
trollhattan
Seriously folks, who wouldn’t want one more round of Onion Joe debating whatever republican douche they threw at him?
Tree With Water
@James E Powell: I was so disgusted with the democratic party by 1992 that I strove to ignore it and the party primaries altogether. I waited instead for the dust to settle. In the weeks leading up to the convention, I begin to hear a lot of rumblings about Hillary and Tipper Gore. So I was curious when they both sat down to an interview with 60 Minutes. It took maybe 5 minutes for me to figure out that the noise was being generated by people who believed the TV, make believe character Harriet Nelson- as opposed to the accomplished, real life Harriet- represented the apogee of American womanhood. They yearned for American women to vacuum once again wearing high heels and a pearl necklace, like TV’s Donna Reed. They certainly did not yearn for Donna Reed the activist, however, she who opposed the War in Vietnam. They’re the people who put Scopes on trial, and who have taken over today’s republican party. Some are billionaires, and all are stupid and/or wicked people that represent a mortal threat to the planet. They must be suppressed, and if not destroyed outright, shattered-then-scattered to the electoral winds. The stakes are too vast to contemplate doing otherwise.
JMV Pyro
Unlimited Corporate Cash is back, mclaren is back to their normal haranguing self, all we need is a new ‘Bob on Portland’ and we’ve got the trifecta.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: maclaren has committed the cardinal sin of being unfunny, and thus, irritating.
Librarian
@RK: I’m not saying that Nash wasn’t important in game theory, he just didn’t invent it.
trollhattan
@JMV Pyro:
If you must, I have the perfect BIPbait (clearly a CIA false flag whatchamacallit). If he shows it’s all your fault.
RK
@Librarian: Was simply curious about the disagreement so thought I’d share what an authoritative source had to say on the matter. Nuttin’ else.
Just Say Joe!
I’m Sidin’ With Biden!
John Revolta
@JMV Pyro: needs more omnes.
Made ya look! Made ya look!
jl
@RaflW:
” The NYT is an utter, hopeless embarrassment when it comes to the Clintons.”
I’m very sleepy, so probably groggy and misunderstanding. It seems like the NYT wrote a news story mostly based on something Dowd ‘reported’ in an opinion column? Obviously past my bedtime, and I am misunderstanding.
Amir Khalid
The story smelled fishy to me from the moment I saw MoDo had a hand in it. I’m glad my initial suspicions have been largely borne out.
Cervantes
@mclaren:
You’re simply mistaken. Von Neumann’s “Zur Theorie der Gesellschaftsspiele” appeared before the Depression. His book on the subject, co-written with Morgenstern, appeared during the war. Nash came in later, in the fifties.
None of which gainsays your point that, like all science, economic models have sometimes required unrealistic and non-universal simplifying assumptions — and yet this is one way in which human understanding proceeds, bit by bit.
Another Holocene Human
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t know why I kept reading those columns, they were so bad. Maybe they were being nutpicked at a site I frequented or maybe I was still reading the paper (more likely) and at the time our local rag was part of the NYT corporation.
They used to carry Thomas Sowell’s dispatches from La-La Land and the execrable Star Jones (nouveau riche Betty Bowers) as well.
Another Holocene Human
@VidaLoca: Not paying people to work for you full time is very progressive.
Did anybody tell him federal patronage hiring is illegal (except for upper crust kind of shit, god forbid we have ambassadors drawn from the professional diplomat corps)?
I know it’s illegal and done anyway in New England, especially Massachusetts, because corruption, it’s what for dinner, but that ain’t gonna fly in DC.
Richard mayhew
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Trumpeters?
Another Holocene Human
@VidaLoca: Grr, I don’t want to bash Sanders. I’m glad he’s running. But I don’t think he has really fresh or new ideas. I’ve heard them before (and I like them). You want someone who is out there and genuinely left of the establishment, there’s Noam Chomsky. And looking at the list of demands of Black Lives Matters, that is a genuinely lefty organization who is ready to talk to the media, crowds, you as well. (The collective “you” is still trying not to hear them, actually, progressive or not.)
I think it’s more exciting when a liberal comes to do a barn burner in a red area because you’re surrounded by the mental garbage of these damaged and these hateful people all day long, and here is some validation that you are right to stay the course. Obama can pull big crowds in red states any day of the week….
Another Holocene Human
@mclaren: Some critical thinking, please. If this is nepotism or whatever, where’s the tail wagging on the dog? Where’s Obama softening his Ukraine position to favor Russia so as to enrich Biden’s son?
Like, sure, I agree, shitty stuff is shitty, but just because a column throws shade it doesn’t mean that Joe is secretly directing events from behind the screen.
Another Holocene Human
@RaflW: I saw a teaching film in school that purported to explain commodity-price inflation cycles. It was super-over-simplified but the sort of thing to make a deep impression on someone. It was also pretty old. I’m sure many younger boomers and Gen Xers saw that film-strip.
The fact that that is not really what happened in the 70s (shorter: we fought a war on the credit card, inflation resulted) doesn’t matter, nor the fact that the film was talking obliquely about oil shocks, not union-driven pay increases doesn’t matter. It is now sacred truth for perhaps even a majority of Americans that wage increases cause inflation, even when they don’t.
It’s also an article of faith that inflation is always bad. Inflation is just fine for regular shmoes. Wage deflation (or any kind of deflation) is the problem. Our great-great’s knew that, but we’ve forgotten and now spout propaganda from the rentier class. You know, if you sit on your ass all day and own stuff, I don’t feel sorry for you. You have plenty of time to adjust your investments if the economic winds shift. (I met a bunch of people like that on a bear blog. Believe me, they follow finance and economics news. Some of them read Econ PhD papers with great interest.)
Another Holocene Human
@mclaren: mclaren, what is your mathematics background? I don’t dispute that much of behavioral theory from the last century is garbage that is going on the incinerator heap of Science, but you do realize game theory has applications within mathematics that has nothing to do with psych/econ, right?
Another Holocene Human
@mclaren:
There’s some truth to this, it’s human nature, you’re “in” now and you have to defend all the way. Your mind starts looking for reasons you’re right.
That’s why you want an independent set of eyes to come in on these things. Prosecutors aren’t truly independent.
Another Holocene Human
@mclaren: You’re angry; go home. (ya;gh)
chopper
@Librarian:
quiet, he’s rolling.
Kay
@efgoldman:
I understand the electoral calculation but why the big rush to get an admission from his supporters that “Sanders is DOOMED”?
What’s the point of that? It’s some kind of odd scarcity idea, like bumper sticker production is down and we have to preserve our limited supply. Are we running out of houses for house parties? People are exhausted from all the Sanders rallies they’re attending and will be too tired to vote in November?
I don’t remember this kind of thing towards Edwards supporters, and Edwards never had a chance in hell. His “grassroots support” was wildly exaggerated by media and the campaign people he hired.
shell
Forget ewwww. How about plain old callus and cruel? Sweet Jesus.
Cervantes
@Kay:
One difference between Edwards and Sanders: the latter is an actual leftist. (The same difference exists in some degree between their supporters.)
I’m sure there are other differences.
Kay
@Cervantes:
Right. That was an interesting transformation, wasn’t it? From Blue Dog to champion of the poor and working class in 6 months.
I helped a statehouse candidate here in 2010 who was one of Edwards’ organizers in Iowa in 2007-08. At that time he was working for the Steelworkers and the union sent him out there. He said the Obama supporters came out of nowhere in the caucuses and completely crushed them. They were shocked because they had been told Edwards was the “grass roots candidate” and they had just arrived from Ohio so didn’t know what was going on in Iowa. Yet both Obama and Clinton courted “the grassroots Edwards supporters” for months. Why don’t Sanders supporters get the same kind of leeway?
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: The ones who make me nervous are primarily anti-Hillary, not-a-dimes-worth types and sound not like Dean or Edwards supporters, but like the Nader 2000 people. They could be troublesome if disappointed. That Sanders seems to have no actual inclination to go Nader is reassuring.
Bill Murray
@Cervantes:
have the primary models ever require realistic assumptions. Much of the field went with Friedman’s assessment that the reality of the assumptions doesn’t matter if the data is fit. That this yields models with no true predictive ability was immaterial as long as the predictions favored the right people
Cervantes
@Matt McIrvin:
I agree that Sanders is likely to champion the Democratic ticket no matter what.
A long aside: I would be considerably more patient with criticisms, even implied criticisms, of what Nader did in 2000 if not for the cowardly behavior of the political establishment towards him.
For example, in early October, 2000, despite personal appeals to Vice President Gore, this happened:
“So crude and so stupid”?
As someone later observed, Nader’s exclusion was (supposedly) predicated on his not being a real factor in the election — and yet the same brilliant Democrats who told him that also told him, months later, that he caused Gore’s defeat in Florida.
Anyhow, Nader sued the (so-called) Commission on Presidential Debates and, two years later, on the eve of the federal trial, the Commission and its Democratic and Republican co-chairs apologized to him and paid his legal fees.
“So crude and so stupid” — or a job well done?
Bill Murray
@Kay:
because these days social issues are the only area one is allowed to be very far left on and still be worthy
Cervantes
@Bill Murray:
@Bill Murray:
Let’s just say we’re on the same wavelength, or close.
C.V. Danes
@VidaLoca: Exactly. There’s a lot of disenchanted folks on both side of the asile that Sanders appeals to right now. And support for Clinton might seem a mile wide, but its only an inch deep. There are many people who are supporting Clinton only because they keep getting told she’s the only choice.
mclaren
@Another Holocene Human:
What is your hard science background?
I’ve cited several peer-reviewed published scientific papers now providing hard proof that the predictions of game theory are systematically violated by real people in the real world. There’s an entire field of economics that’s sprung up now to address this issue: behavioral economics.
Yet the kooks and cranks and crackpots on this forum ignore the evidence disconfirming game theory and monomaniacally focus on irrevelent non sequiturs like whether John Von Neuman wrote the first papers on game theory.
There’s actually a name for this fallacy: it’s the fallacy of the non sequitur. Object to an argument with a completely irrelevant point, then when the first person refuses to address the point since it’s entirely irrevelevant, gleefully claim “You have haven’t answered my objection!” and declare victory.
This kind of stuff might have worked in kindergarten, but out here in the grown-up world, you need to address the fact that peer-reviewed scientific research papers containing research that shows people do not behave the way game theory says they will is a killer objection.
As for game theory having non-economic applications…yes, genius applications like…the Cuban Missile Crisis. Once again, the game theorists got called in, gave bad advice, and Kennedy had to basically throw them all out and seek an off-the-books personal meeting with one of Kruschev’s contacts through a D.C. journalist. Exactly what game theorists said JKF should not do, since that move would allegedly prove that JKF was “weak.”
Game theory is garbage. There are multiple equilibria, not just one Pareto Optimal equilibrium. The Nash Equilibrium almost never gets reached in reality, people don’t behave that way. Game theory doesn’t work in the real world. Research proves people never behave the way game theory assumes they will. Real world corporations systematically avoid using game theory because it’s crap. Professors have written articles about this. It’s well known. Game theory is the hard AI of mathematical behavioral science…total junkthink backed up by crap math with a track record of epochal failure.
mclaren
See ‘The Mythology of Game Theory.” Yet another peer reviewed paper. I keep citing this stuff, everyone keeps ignoring it.
Link here:
http://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/237/docs/McTurnLer_Mythology.pdf