there’s another GOP debate?
and you people are watching it?
is there something that you didn’t learn from the last one?
7.
garbo
@dmsilev: Correct. Wolf is more “shouty” than “screechy.”
8.
mclaren
Cue the obots screaming “You must vote for Obama in 2012 because ZOMG, President Perry, President Perry, President Perry!”
Let’s get this clear, people.
Rick Perry will not be the Republican presidential nominee.
The guy has called Social Security “a Ponzi scheme” and called it a “monstrous lie.” All Democrats have to do is force Rick Perry to keep repeating those claims, and he goes down in flames.
Even the most hardened far-right Tea Party fanatic is not going to vote for a presidential candidate who wants to end social security.
Ain’t gonna happen.
Don’t waste our time citing the polls showing Rick Perry in the lead. This time in the 2007-8 election cycle, all the polls shows Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton in the lead.
Americans have had it with Dubya. They’re sick of him. They don’t want him anywhere near the presidency. Rick Perry is a Texas-bred Dubya clone who wants to shut down social security.
He has no chance. None. Zero. Perry will never get anywhere near the Republican nomination.
I still haven’t decided whether I’m even going to vote in the 2012 presidential election, because enabling Obama’s lies and betrayals is more than I can stomach. But one thing I can goddamn sure guarantee you — not voting for Obama won’t give us president Perry.
9.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@cleek: It’s worth the price of admission. They are nuttier tonight. The blood lust continues.
Seriously, no, I’m watching football. It’s more meaningful.
11.
Yutsano
@mclaren: You just declared yourself useless then.
@Alex S.: Last I heard the Tea Party wasn’t too crazy about any of them. I don’t think anything that happens tonight will change that perception.
12.
licensed to kill time
I think the screeching from the debate killed my wireless connection, just spent the last half hour wrestling with it and now I’m back up but I fear further exposure may nuke it for good. haha.
Man, these Repubs just lie like rugs.
13.
Alex S.
Meh, so I’m watching after all.. but I’ve missed the first 45 minutes. I’m surprised about Bachmann’s attack against Perry and Merck. She will be cut off by the powers that be, her anti-business stance has to be eliminated. And interesting that the ‘Tea Party’ actually is breaking through here. These guys might abandon Bachmann for Paul. Romney and Perry have their own faults from their point of view.
I’ve been watching bits and pieces but I’m thinking of getting drunk and watching the full re-run at 11. How much fun will this shit be drunk? I. Am. Serious.
…is there something that you didn’t learn from the last one?
Oddly, this time, the debate has been at least coherent in the arguments; sure, the answers are mostly wrong, but the last one was insufferable in its inconsistency.
Cain, in particular, has been coherent; shock me to the core, Newt, too. Perry is still on the pedestal and not really having anyone knock him off it.
Edit: Woah, Perry steps on a big turd on state tuition; unforced error, a big one.
I think the screeching from the debate killed my wireless connection
Hey, if you want to do something wholesome and nostalgic, albeit screechy, there’s always contributing to this.
Remember the glory of dialing up?
__
Kids today won’t know the shrill cry of a 9600 baud, or the magical “doodleeedoo” of a 28.8 modem.
__
Help preserve our digital history. Join us in recording your best impression of a “modem handshake” sound.
22.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Helen: I quit drinking 20 years ago, you’re asking the wrong person.
Yeah, probably true. The ‘Tea Party’ is just anarchy disguised as conservatism and a lot of ‘Fuck You’.
Edit: Mitt Romney still talks too fast.
28.
Irony Abounds
I’ll be anxious to hear from the wingers about how unfair it was for CNN to allow these wackjobs the chance to show just what stooges these people are.
Perry will never get anywhere near the Republican nomination.
Forget Perry for a moment. Electing any of these assholes would be an unspeakable tragedy. I’d rather have a giant meteor crash into the Earth creating an environmental catastrophe that resulted in the extinction of the human race than see any of these goddamn motherfuckers become the next President. All of these Republicans are either now or will become sock puppets of the Tea Party movement.
42.
kindness
Heck with the debate. Cliff notes tomorrow.
Right now I’m watchin’ the Patriots beat the Dolphins & shortly whom-ever beat the Raiders.
43.
Boudica
Newt’s still got his fear panties on, I see. How does he sleep at night?
Please do not say such things until the last second has ticked away.
Go Pats.
49.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Paul thinks WWII was the “last war”!
50.
butler
@mclaren: Even assuming you’re right about Perry (which is a hell of a lot to assume), you would prefer a President Romney?
Let me rephrase that: you want ANY Republican making the next 1,2,3, even 4 appointments to the Supreme Court? You want the executive pivot point for all legislation for the next 4 to 8 years to swing radically to the right? Are you naive or just too cool to be bothered with political reality?
Rather burn the world down than not get your way 100%? Sounds a lot like a teabagger to me.
51.
MikeJ
If Mr. Bean weren’t on Top Gear I might watch the debate.
Santorum is now accusing Paul of parroting Osama Bin Laden. There is a certain air of trapped rats devouring each other on the stage.
55.
licensed to kill time
@The Dangerman: He said about his book “I don’t know if Kurt Cobain wrote it or what” and it fell flat cuz I doubt anybody there knows who the hell Kurt Cobain is.
Good thing McCain isn’t running this time round. He’d have interrupted with “You forgot the Punic Wars”.
57.
dslak
As someone who’s sponsored an immigrant, Bachmann’s claims are complete bullshit. People aren’t allowed into the country unless they can show demonstrable ability to support themselves, or prove support from a sponsor in the US. And fuck her for conflating liberalized immigration laws, which ended discrimination against Asians, and illegal immigration across the Southern US border.
Well, maybe it is the history/government teacher in me, but technically, he is correct. The last officially declared war in our history is World War II.
Just saying. I don’t know the context. Too busy watching Team Brady.
I love how, just for a few short moments, glimpses of sanity break through whenever the candidates are under pressure. It shows that all of this is just a necessary act to appease the crazy-people. Also, now even the Republicans don’t want to stay in Afghanistan anymore. Times have changed since the days of McCain and the 100-year-presence in Afghanistan.
72.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Bostondreams: How about all you historians skip telling this Vietnam vet about what “technically” was a war, ok?
73.
Cacti
Perry’s another Texas dim wit.
Romney’s privileged rich, born with a diamond crusted spoon up his ass (that’s why he always seems so awkward).
But tell me, does anyone here think there would be more than a thimble’s worth of difference between the legislation they’d sign as POTUS?
Hard to say, but I am pretty sure that their signatures would all begin and end with X.
81.
jon
WWII was the last war if you’re like Ron Paul and you insist that Congress is the one to declare war. Not a radical prospect, that. It’s actually in the Constitution.
82.
Anya
The Afghan teahadist woman didn’t get any love from Huntsman. That was cold, man.
83.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): It occurred to me that you might have a view as to the reality of that particular excursion, which sure as hell seemed like a real war to me, and I just saw it on the TV.
84.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@jon: And just how many fucking people here do you think don’t know that?
ETA: Not at all meaning there are not any significant differences within the Republicans that actually matter. Look at what they are like in the House and Senate. Anyway, Paul and Huntsman MIGHT not rush us into the big war against Islam that the audience feels was denied them.
Even assuming you’re right about Perry (which is a hell of a lot to assume), you would prefer a President Romney?
The crackpots have come out in force tonight. For the umpteenth time…Romney is a Mormon. To the fundamentalist evangelical Christians who form the base of the Republican party, Mormonism is equivalent to a Satanic cult, so Romney has zero chance of getting the nomination.
Let me rephrase that: you want ANY Republican making the next 1,2,3, even 4 appointments to the Supreme Court?
What’s the difference? Obama will appoint the same far-right fanatics to the Supreme Court that Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann would, so what does it matter?
You want the executive pivot point for all legislation for the next 4 to 8 years to swing radically to the right?
No, I certainly don’t, and that’s why I’m not going to vote for Obama. Barack Obama is going to offer the legislation and make the appointments and propose the crazy far-right policies that the Republicans would propose if any of them got elected to the presidency.
Are you naive or just too cool to be bothered with political reality?
Let’s talk about political reality, crackpot: Barack Obama ran on hope and change, and he gave us endless war and more national security state and presidential orders for the assassination of a U.S. citizen without even accusing him of committing a crime and expanding federal raids on state marijuana dispensaries and more giveaways to the Wall Street criminals who trashed the world economy.
That’s political reality.
If you’re disgusted by the insane far-right policies proposed by any of the Republican candidates for president, those are the policies Barack Obama has put in place and will continue and intensify.
Rather burn the world down than not get your way 100%? Sounds a lot like a teabagger to me.
Typical crackpot reasoning. There’s no middle ground — anyone who refuses to fall to his knees and worship obama is a teabagger.
You need to take it to the next level, and call me a “fifth columnist” and “evil” and “dangerously insane” and “an enemy combatant” for criticizing Barack Obama. You need to notify Homeland Security and NORAD and Delta Force to detain me, send out a team of marine corps snipers, and, if necessary, put a black bag over my head and drag me board a learjet headed for one of our third world allies so I can be tortured to death, now that I’ve said I’m seriously thinking about not voting for Obama.
You people are the political equivalent of flying saucer cultists.
“I don’t always vote, but when i do, it won’t be for the person who at least acknowledges the issues i care about, over the person who hates everything i stand for.”
No, I certainly don’t, and that’s why I’m not going to vote for Obama. Barack Obama is going to offer the legislation and make the appointments and propose the crazy far-right policies that the Republicans would propose if any of them got elected to the presidency.
Yup, because lord knows the two nutcases he appointed to the SC already shows that.
97.
doofus
@mclaren: So, not a dime’s worth of difference between Obama and Perry? Good to know.
98.
jon
Sheesh, Raven. It’s not exactly a state secret that Ron Paul is a bit of a stickler for Constitutional issues.
What’s the difference? Obama will appoint the same far-right fanatics to the Supreme Court that Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann would, so what does it matter?
Right. I can just see Rick Perry appointing Sonia Sotomayor.
100.
wasabi gasp
Someone better get voted off next week, else this show sucks.
101.
Reality Check
The Rick Perry Juggernaut rolls on. Romney is utterly panicked.
102.
Anya
I wholeheartedly agree with the Guardian’s live blog:
Frankly, I’d vote for any candidate who would pass a bill that bans CNN from ever hosting a presidential debate ever again.
_____
And that’s it, it’s over. Rick Perry retires to bind his wounds.
103.
Comrade Mary
Obama will appoint the same far-right fanatics to the Supreme Court that Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann would, so what does it matter?
The Rick Perry Juggernaut rolls on. Romney is utterly panicked.
That might be the first thing you’ve ever written that I agree with.
105.
MikeJ
Economist:
9:56: I don’t see this debate alone changing the running order, but they landed a few blows on Perry, and opened a line of attack against him as a big-government booster and a faux-conservative. Bachmann seemed to get her stride back; she performed well, but her window has passed. She’s running for increased party stature, not the presidency. And Huntsman failed to match the big strides he made in the last debate.
9:55: That was very scrappy. I can’t say that anyone won, but Perry looked very precarious to me at times.
106.
Suffern ACE
The most important thing however, is that Miss Philippines is still alive.
107.
butler
The crackpots have come out in force tonight.
I love that my one little post= a brigade of crackpots.
For the umpteenth time…Romney is a Mormon
NO, Romney is a REPUBLICAN. Meaning they won’t give a shit if he skullfucks puppies every Sunday morning, they’ll find a way to justify it and support him.
What’s the difference? Obama will appoint the same far-right fanatics to the Supreme Court that Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann would, so what does it matter?
Ok, you’re trolling me, right? This has to be a troll attempt.
No, I certainly don’t, and that’s why I’m not going to vote for Obama. Barack Obama is going to offer the legislation and make the appointments and propose the crazy far-right policies that the Republicans would propose if any of them got elected to the presidency.
Yup, has to be trolling.
Let’s talk about political reality, crackpot:
Yes, lets. The reality is this: THIS IS THE SYSTEM WE LIVE IN. THIS IS THE WORLD WE LIVE IN. Its not fucking perfect, and it never will be. Yes, Obama has fucked up. He’s a human being, human beings fuck up. No one who has ever or will ever serve in any office won’t fuck up in some way. Grow up and deal with it.
Typical crackpot reasoning. There’s no middle ground—anyone who refuses to fall to his knees and worship obamais a teabagger.
No, anyone who refuses to live in the world as it exists is a hopeless idealist or a fanatic, and probably a little of both.
You people are the political equivalent of flying saucer cultists.
But seriously, this is trolling, right?
108.
Anya
@mclaren: Show us on the doll where the black President hurt you.
109.
Reality Check
Perry has this nomination all but wrapped up and in his back pocket. Game’s over barring a scandal.
110.
butler
Wait, one last thing for Mcclaren: if Perry has no chance, and Romney has no chance, then who’s the nominee? And why would that person be any fucking better than either of them?
111.
Morzer
To me, Romney looks like a boxer who knows he’s throwing what ought to be haymakers – and simply can’t understand why the audience is yawning and he’s losing on points.
Herman Cain claims that a restaurant is the basic building block of the American economy. He reminds us once again that his experience includes being president of the National Restaurant Association. (Whose national HQ, incidentally, was next to the Guardian’s old office in Washington DC. And the staff canteen was rubbish.)
113.
Calouste
From the Guardian:
Once again, the lazy attacks on Ben Bernanke are appalling. The trouble is that with that rhetoric, no credible economist would want to serve on the Fed with some of the people on stage as US president.
Feature, not bug.
114.
doofus
@butler: Yeah, I thought of that question too, but then it occurred to me that I didn’t care what the answer was.
Shorter Huntsman :”Fuck you, Afghan woman, but America will shine shinily. So you can feel better, in a shiny sort of way”.
Jon Huntsman: Firefly fan.
116.
RandyH
Tonight’s CNN Tea Party Express Debate has been brought to you by the “Clean Coal” Industry.
117.
Corner Stone
Romney will be the R nominee. I don’t know why this is so hard for people here to understand.
118.
licensed to kill time
Perry’s going all ‘tear it down’ on a Tea Party crowd, stalking back and forth on the stage w/a microphone like a revivalist preacher. He just called the EPA a cemetery for jobs, and how we don’t need the gummint coming around here and getting all up in our face.
That’s the snippet I heard, crowd LOVES it.
119.
AkaDad
The clear winner in tonight’s debate is Obama.
120.
Calouste
Oh sweet Jesus, now Wolf Blitzer is asking what changes the candidates would make to the White House. Really.
Newt says he’d bring ballet and a chess set. Bachmann wins: “I’d bring a copy of the declaration of independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and that’s it.”
You know Michelle, stuff has happened in the last 220 years since the Bill of Rights was ratified.
Of course what she really means and what the audience hears, is that she will bring a sacred unalterable text (the Bible, not the Constitution) to the White House and that she will turn the clock back to before the 11th amendment.
To me, Romney looks like a boxer who knows he’s throwing what ought to be haymakers – and simply can’t understand why the audience is yawning and he’s losing on points.
It’s still the Eddie Haskell factor.
People just don’t like an obvious phony.
122.
scav
So, should all their debates be scheduled on nights with full or nearly full moons for the apparent entertainment value of the candidates revealing their true(r) selves?
Of course what she really means and what the audience hears, is that she will bring a sacred unalterable text (the Bible, not the Constitution) to the White House and that she will turn the clock back to before the 11th amendment.
ask her to point out where in the Constitution it says a woman can be president.
126.
kimp
I am still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that the audience was cheering the idea of letting the uninsured die. OMG, what is wrong with those people?
Of course what she really means and what the audience hears, is that she will bring a sacred unalterable text (the Bible, not the Constitution) to the White House and that she will turn the clock back to before the 11th amendment.
She will then proceed to ignore that sacred text with the same enthusiasm with which she currently ignores the constitution. (Love your neighbor, feed the hungry and clothe the poor, rich man + eye of needle, etc).
130.
JCT
@kimp: Because they are a bunch of imbeciles that are permanently arrested at age 17. Somehow managed to miss the classes on “there but for the grace of g_d go I” and Christian charity.
Grotesque.
131.
gogol's wife
Thank you all for watching this so I didn’t have to. I feel I got a kind of Cubist version of the debate, all strange angles and flat perspective but much truer than so-called “reality.”
Santorum looked like, well, you know. Santorum. (The link just perpetuates the Google top-ranking status.)
Ron Paul looked like a foolish old man. And he was booed by the racist audience for suggesting that not all Muslims are evil.
Newt’s quote of the night:
I’m not particularly worried about Gov. Perry and Gov. Romney frightening the American people when President Obama scares them every single day.
(ENORMOUS standing ovation from the racist white audience.)
What might he have meant by that?
Huntsman is the invisible man.
Cain claims not to be a politician, yet he’s running for President.
Did any of them give Rise of the Planet of the Apes a negative review?
136.
Morzer
I really feel that we ought to try and live-blog the next Republican mass-debation in the voice of Jon Gruden. I feel that phrases like “pressure up the middle” could only bring clarity to this.. intriguing collection of people.
137.
Nutella
I wonder why some of their opponents don’t use the obvious question to Bachmann and Perry: Why is it that you claim to oppose government spending when you have spent your entire career taking money from the government and have never once held a private job?
138.
scav
They be aginst dat dere ebil ebil Guvornmint death panels: they be all for them death panels they be settin on themselves, don’t cha know. Well, the grassroots death panels (so long as the grass is the approved of kind) and the for-profit ones.
I am still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that the audience was cheering the idea of letting the uninsured die. OMG, what is wrong with those people?
personal responsibility. The hypothetical Wolf Blitzer was proposing was a guy who CAN afford to buy health insurance and didn’t, doesn’t surprise me that people feel “If he didn’t feel like taking care of himself when he could, fuck him”
Join us in recording your best impression of a “modem handshake” sound.
I used to be able to whistle into an acoustic coupler and get the computer on the other end to respond.
Couldn’t do it now, though.
142.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@mclaren:
1. Being in Texas, I assure you that until the day after the election, you should be afraid of the possibility of President Perry.
2. President Romney will only differ from President Perry in what he says while he’s repealing Social Security.
Not voting for Obama guarantees a Republican victory, and there is nothing right now worse than that.
As for Obama, I’m not waiting for a Repubican president just so you can get over your amnesia of 2001-2009, or for that matter, 1993-2001, where the only major legislative accomplishment that wasn’t Republican was the tax increase.
She will then proceed to ignore that sacred text with the same enthusiasm with which she currently ignores the constitution. (Love your neighbor, feed the hungry and clothe the poor, rich man + eye of needle, etc).
@Comrade Mary: 9600 baud? The first modem I had, for my Apple ][ computer, was a 300 baud thing. I couldn’t believe how fast the 1200 baud modem that replaced it was.
147.
OzoneR
Yeah so a self-described liberal friend of mine said this about her supporting Ron Paul now
He has different ideas then everyone else, and I like someone who’s able to stand up and be different (and not an idiot).
@gnomedad: heh, 1st thing that popped into my head, too.
155.
jibeaux
@OzoneR: Hell, you can find those folks in every park in America.
Still, it’s a fascinating philosophy, that we should vote for people who are different from everyone else. I have an uncle who would apparently make a crackerjack presidential candidate.
156.
scav
@MikeJ: ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch. Parroty indeed, but I still want to see you take a bite out of your ratpack.
157.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@OzoneR: Does she not realize that the only reason he stands up and says that stuff is because he knows it will never pass.
158.
Suffern ACE
@jibeaux: Yet the Rent’s Too Damn High candidate didn’t end up making a difference last fall.
Obama will appoint the same far-right fanatics to the Supreme Court that Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann would, so what does it matter?
This is the point where I deem you crazier than the lady from Queens who told me Obama supported the Holocaust when I asked her to vote for David Weprin.
Exactamundo. The long-term goal of all these clowns (barring Huntsman…maybe Romney but tough to say what the jellyfish really believes) is to undermine any and all confidence in government. Threatening the Fed chairman with Texas frontier justice advances that goal in its own fucktarded way.
KIM-1 microcomputer. hex keypad input and LED digit displays for output. Had about as much computing power as a modern novelty musical greeting card.
I still have a NEC in the basement that’s a TRS-80 clone, if you can believe someone would want such a thing.
168.
harlana
can someone explain to me why anyone would elect Rick Santorum?
169.
harlana
@wasabi gasp: Huntsman is a dick, I don’t think it goes much deeper than that except for a bit of nerd-rock element thrown in there, he likes to do that it seems
170.
harlana
Perry is, in fact, more repulsive than Santorum, yes, it is possible
@RossInDetroit: I was, of course, kidding about the punch cards. I had an after-school job at Lockheed once where I had to sort through boxes of punch cards and magnetic tapes, and decide whether or not to throw them away.
Also, I have an Apple //e out in the garage, somewhere. I used that computer for a good six years, through part of high school, and all of college.
172.
MikeJ
@Comrade Kevin: The eng school had a card punch, but the only reader hooked up to anything was in Rolla. My personal machine was a commie, but that’s not too surprising.
173.
Dennis SGMM
@RossInDetroit:
The first computers I worked on required programming in COBOL via punch cards. I then “moved on” to PASCAL and FORTRAN. I was, and still am, a rotten typist and with punch cards there was no error correction: you just loaded a fresh card. Good times.
I missed punch cards by one term. I started school the fall they fired up a new VAX VMS 780 with terminal input. We coded COBOL on coding sheets & typed them into dumb terminals.
I have since spent 10X thousands of hours hacking COBOL, Macro Level CICS & other business machine codeage. Not much since Y2K, though.
175.
Origuy
I started on an ASR33 Teletype machine that punched paper tape. I would type in a BASIC program, call up the Indiana University CDC 6600 on a 110 baud modem, feed in the tape, get my error messages, fix them a line at a time, and punch out a new version of my program. That was in 1973, my junior year in high school.
My lawn, get off it.
176.
harlana
@Dennis SGMM: I worked as a programmer in COBOL for a year, (I sucked!) we worked on a mainframe, of course, part of my responsibility was to get the server started in the morning by feeding in the punch cards to get the mainframe booted up for the day
Paper Tape! Baudot existed only in our wildest dreams. We saved code and data to audio cassette tape on a portable borrowed from my sister. I kid you not. The mid ’70s were lean times for teenaged computer nerds.
I’ve been working in an elementary school this week. The ‘house rules’ posted on the walls require the students to leave their iPads in their lockers during class.
179.
harlana
999
999
999
000
180.
harlana
@RossInDetroit: now that is some nerd stuff i can get into, i’m not into the gaming stuff, but that is cool in a historical sense
181.
RossInDetroit
Time was I’d debugged so many COBOL core dumps I could practically diagnose the problem by weighing the printout in my hand.
I’m a hardware guy these days. Making stereo amps out of WWII guided missile vacuum tubes & stuff like that. It’s more hands-on. I doubt I’ll ever code again, though I had a good 20 year run at it.
In terms of history of technology, the development of RADAR during WWII is an amazing story.
Join us in recording your best impression of a “modem handshake” sound.
When they were three years old, my twins used to do it like this: “Oweeda … ssskaaaaaaaaahtch!”
184.
Davis X. Machina
@Origuy: Identical experience, same year, using the membership of a friend from a well heeled family. We were working out of the Boston Museum of Science. Acoustic coupler, rubber cups for the phone.
Technically speaking, Ron Paul is correct. WW II was the last time America actually declared war on anyone.
Every American use of military force since WW II has been some sort of bogus “police action” or “sending advisors plus military support” or some other mealy-mouthed doubletalk.
America has not declared war since December 7, 1941. And that’s a big part of the problem with U.S. use of military force since 1945. Because when we’ve got a situation where the American president can act like a Roman emperor and simply order hundreds of thousands of troops to bomb and strafe and roll tanks into some third world hellhole on the other side of the world, with no barrier to entry to the conflict raised by the requirement that congress put its ass on the line and actually vote for a full declaration of war, we’re in a very dangerous situation.
That kind of situation of send-in-the-troops-because-the-emperor’s-whim-desires-it leads directly to a military garrison state where the rule of law goes away and might makes right. Which is, in fact, the kind of society America is rapidly turning into.
186.
priscianus jr
When I started high school in 1959, I used to help out in the student record office. We used edge-notched cards, known as McBee cards, with a wire rod. It was fun pulling those cards. This technology was invented in 1896. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge-notched_card
@butler:
I’m not quite sure with Mclaren. I understand it has a blog and a long history of this kind of freakish disassociation with reality outside of these comments. But we ARE talking about someone who – and I’m not kidding – rewrote Obama’s SOTU because the actual one didn’t betray him enough.
@Morzer:
She believes in specifically this. It’s one of her big super-Christian things. Somehow, she herself PERSONALLY gets an exception. Tea Party in a nutshell.
188.
gnomedad
I learned computing with toilet paper and pebbles, whippersnappers.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Screeching fucking banshee.
Tom
Back and to the right, back and to the right, back and to the right…
dmsilev
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
Now now, Wolf Blitzer isn’t *that* bad.
The Dangerman
I wish Bachmann would have answered the question (the answer under her philosophy is “let him die”; she just can’t say it)…
…but her getting Perry to admit his price is higher than $5K was sweet.
Comrade Mary
Little-known fact: banshees, like cats, have barbed dicks. You’d screech too, sweetie.
cleek
there’s another GOP debate?
and you people are watching it?
is there something that you didn’t learn from the last one?
garbo
@dmsilev: Correct. Wolf is more “shouty” than “screechy.”
mclaren
Cue the obots screaming “You must vote for Obama in 2012 because ZOMG, President Perry, President Perry, President Perry!”
Let’s get this clear, people.
Rick Perry will not be the Republican presidential nominee.
The guy has called Social Security “a Ponzi scheme” and called it a “monstrous lie.” All Democrats have to do is force Rick Perry to keep repeating those claims, and he goes down in flames.
Even the most hardened far-right Tea Party fanatic is not going to vote for a presidential candidate who wants to end social security.
Ain’t gonna happen.
Don’t waste our time citing the polls showing Rick Perry in the lead. This time in the 2007-8 election cycle, all the polls shows Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton in the lead.
Americans have had it with Dubya. They’re sick of him. They don’t want him anywhere near the presidency. Rick Perry is a Texas-bred Dubya clone who wants to shut down social security.
He has no chance. None. Zero. Perry will never get anywhere near the Republican nomination.
I still haven’t decided whether I’m even going to vote in the 2012 presidential election, because enabling Obama’s lies and betrayals is more than I can stomach. But one thing I can goddamn sure guarantee you — not voting for Obama won’t give us president Perry.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@cleek: It’s worth the price of admission. They are nuttier tonight. The blood lust continues.
Baud
@cleek: I haven’t decided who to vote for yet? :)
Seriously, no, I’m watching football. It’s more meaningful.
Yutsano
@mclaren: You just declared yourself useless then.
@Alex S.: Last I heard the Tea Party wasn’t too crazy about any of them. I don’t think anything that happens tonight will change that perception.
licensed to kill time
I think the screeching from the debate killed my wireless connection, just spent the last half hour wrestling with it and now I’m back up but I fear further exposure may nuke it for good. haha.
Man, these Repubs just lie like rugs.
Alex S.
Meh, so I’m watching after all.. but I’ve missed the first 45 minutes. I’m surprised about Bachmann’s attack against Perry and Merck. She will be cut off by the powers that be, her anti-business stance has to be eliminated. And interesting that the ‘Tea Party’ actually is breaking through here. These guys might abandon Bachmann for Paul. Romney and Perry have their own faults from their point of view.
lamh32
@Yutsano:
thank you. my thought exactly.
Bostondreams
“Never to the left, forever to the right.”
“With our land, cash in hand
Self-command, future planned
And we’ll hold to our gold
Tradition that is old, reluctant to be bold.”
Quarks
@cleek: No, just following along with the Economist’s snarky and colorful liveblog and Gary Johnson’s drug-infused outraged tweets about it.
lamh32
I’m not even watching the debate, and I’m already tired of it.
When is this thing supposed to be over
Helen
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
I’ve been watching bits and pieces but I’m thinking of getting drunk and watching the full re-run at 11. How much fun will this shit be drunk? I. Am. Serious.
The Dangerman
@cleek:
Oddly, this time, the debate has been at least coherent in the arguments; sure, the answers are mostly wrong, but the last one was insufferable in its inconsistency.
Cain, in particular, has been coherent; shock me to the core, Newt, too. Perry is still on the pedestal and not really having anyone knock him off it.
Edit: Woah, Perry steps on a big turd on state tuition; unforced error, a big one.
Alex S.
Oh, tell me more about salad, Rick.
Comrade Mary
@licensed to kill time:
Hey, if you want to do something wholesome and nostalgic, albeit screechy, there’s always contributing to this.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Helen: I quit drinking 20 years ago, you’re asking the wrong person.
dmsilev
@lamh32:
Top of the hour, I think.
Until the next one, anyway.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Huntsman accuses Perry of treason.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@cleek: Some of us are masochists.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
What the fuck, Latino’s “come here” after we steal it from them.
Alex S.
@Yutsano:
Yeah, probably true. The ‘Tea Party’ is just anarchy disguised as conservatism and a lot of ‘Fuck You’.
Edit: Mitt Romney still talks too fast.
Irony Abounds
I’ll be anxious to hear from the wingers about how unfair it was for CNN to allow these wackjobs the chance to show just what stooges these people are.
Linda Featheringill
I just noted: Perry’s suit jacket looks like it was tailored to cover a gun holster.
Hmmmm.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
The Rio Fucking Grande is NOT a state border!
licensed to kill time
@Comrade Mary:
Ha! Bleeoo is a great name, that’s just what it sounded like (yes, I remember dial-ups).
eta: workin’ on my impression as we speak ;)
Boudica
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Huntsman has been a real idiot tonight. The Nirvana comment earlier, now the treason comment. Not helping his cause.
Irony Abounds
Huntsman is supposed to be the adult in the room, and he’s showing himself to be a bit of a snide dick.
The Dangerman
Damn, who pissed in Huntsman’s Cheeerios?
doofus
Perry is getting nailed tonight if anybody on the R side is actually watching.
Boudica
Now Huntsman wants foreign capital to raise real estate prices….yes! let’s sell America to the highest bidder.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Boudica: He and Bachmann are going for the bomb.
dmsilev
@Boudica: What is Huntsman’s cause right now? Surely he can’t think that he can win the nomination in 2012?
The Dangerman
I missed the Nirvana comment; what was it? Treason was nastiest, bu the flip flopper thing was almost as nasty.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Huntsman is on the right track against a guy who talks up secession, but he’s going about it all wrong.
hilts
@mclaren:
Forget Perry for a moment. Electing any of these assholes would be an unspeakable tragedy. I’d rather have a giant meteor crash into the Earth creating an environmental catastrophe that resulted in the extinction of the human race than see any of these goddamn motherfuckers become the next President. All of these Republicans are either now or will become sock puppets of the Tea Party movement.
kindness
Heck with the debate. Cliff notes tomorrow.
Right now I’m watchin’ the Patriots beat the Dolphins & shortly whom-ever beat the Raiders.
Boudica
Newt’s still got his fear panties on, I see. How does he sleep at night?
Freddie deBoer
HOT WATER BURN BABY!
Morzer
@mclaren:
Better get the meds upped, Mc, because you sound crazier than Palin.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@The Dangerman: It was weird, he made some reference to “was your book written by Cobain.” I’m old so I didn’t get it.
Boudica
@The Dangerman: It was so obscure, I can’t even remember what it was.
Bostondreams
@kindness:
Please do not say such things until the last second has ticked away.
Go Pats.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Paul thinks WWII was the “last war”!
butler
@mclaren: Even assuming you’re right about Perry (which is a hell of a lot to assume), you would prefer a President Romney?
Let me rephrase that: you want ANY Republican making the next 1,2,3, even 4 appointments to the Supreme Court? You want the executive pivot point for all legislation for the next 4 to 8 years to swing radically to the right? Are you naive or just too cool to be bothered with political reality?
Rather burn the world down than not get your way 100%? Sounds a lot like a teabagger to me.
MikeJ
If Mr. Bean weren’t on Top Gear I might watch the debate.
doofus
@mclaren: Gonna vote for Nader?
Boudica
We were attacked for our freedoms!
Morzer
Santorum is now accusing Paul of parroting Osama Bin Laden. There is a certain air of trapped rats devouring each other on the stage.
licensed to kill time
@The Dangerman: He said about his book “I don’t know if Kurt Cobain wrote it or what” and it fell flat cuz I doubt anybody there knows who the hell Kurt Cobain is.
dmsilev
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
Good thing McCain isn’t running this time round. He’d have interrupted with “You forgot the Punic Wars”.
dslak
As someone who’s sponsored an immigrant, Bachmann’s claims are complete bullshit. People aren’t allowed into the country unless they can show demonstrable ability to support themselves, or prove support from a sponsor in the US. And fuck her for conflating liberalized immigration laws, which ended discrimination against Asians, and illegal immigration across the Southern US border.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@dmsilev: That’s phunny!
Morzer
Shorter Huntsman :”Fuck you, Afghan woman, but America will shine shinily. So you can feel better, in a shiny sort of way”.
Baud
To be fair to Huntsman, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was all about the impact of Social Security’s impending insolvency on young people.
lamh32
and paul gets booed by crowd for saying not all muslims are jihadist…WOW CNN should be so proud of themselves.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@dslak: Hey, no jumpin around threads!
Boudica
What would they add to the White House? A gallows in the Rose Garden?
Felinious Wench
My calm, logical, rational, unemotional Poly Sci and Economics teacher husband is yelling at the TV and gnawing the furniture.
The Dangerman
OK, check one of my earlier comments; coherency went of the rails with Santorum and Paul and then Afghanistan. Was there an answer in there someplace?
I don’t get the Cobain reference; I’ll go find a transcript.
Edit: I thought the Perry title was Fed Up or similar; it was No Apology? OK, that makes sense now.
Bostondreams
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
Well, maybe it is the history/government teacher in me, but technically, he is correct. The last officially declared war in our history is World War II.
Just saying. I don’t know the context. Too busy watching Team Brady.
Edit: posted too late. Alas.
0whole1
So…cheering someone dying because they can’t afford insurance… Too much? Too soon?
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@The Dangerman: It was in reference to Perry’s book.
Boudica
@efgoldman: You mean Hawkeye and BJ weren’t in a real war?
Linda Featheringill
Enough of this. I’m gone.
Night all.
Alex S.
I love how, just for a few short moments, glimpses of sanity break through whenever the candidates are under pressure. It shows that all of this is just a necessary act to appease the crazy-people. Also, now even the Republicans don’t want to stay in Afghanistan anymore. Times have changed since the days of McCain and the 100-year-presence in Afghanistan.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Bostondreams: How about all you historians skip telling this Vietnam vet about what “technically” was a war, ok?
Cacti
Perry’s another Texas dim wit.
Romney’s privileged rich, born with a diamond crusted spoon up his ass (that’s why he always seems so awkward).
But tell me, does anyone here think there would be more than a thimble’s worth of difference between the legislation they’d sign as POTUS?
dslak
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Anne essentially ended the thread while I was writing my post!
Morzer
Romney wants Winston Churchill’s bust. Is teat-sucking in prospect?
Boudica
It’s over!!!
butler
And Romney revives the zombie lie about Obama removing Churchill’s bust from the White House. He’s learning how to pander to these idiots.
hilts
Wolf Blitzer is one of the cruelest insults to journalism.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@dslak: I was kiddin.
Morzer
@Cacti:
Hard to say, but I am pretty sure that their signatures would all begin and end with X.
jon
WWII was the last war if you’re like Ron Paul and you insist that Congress is the one to declare war. Not a radical prospect, that. It’s actually in the Constitution.
Anya
The Afghan teahadist woman didn’t get any love from Huntsman. That was cold, man.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): It occurred to me that you might have a view as to the reality of that particular excursion, which sure as hell seemed like a real war to me, and I just saw it on the TV.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@jon: And just how many fucking people here do you think don’t know that?
Morzer
@Anya:
But America will shine, shine, shine.
Jon Huntsman, The Shining, coming to movie theaters near you.
Bostondreams
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
Sorry, didn’t mean to offend.
Suffern ACE
@Cacti: Not at all.
ETA: Not at all meaning there are not any significant differences within the Republicans that actually matter. Look at what they are like in the House and Senate. Anyway, Paul and Huntsman MIGHT not rush us into the big war against Islam that the audience feels was denied them.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
\@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): And he was talking about building aircraft to fight the “last war. But don’t let me get in the way.
butler
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Possibly the person who was nitpicking the Constitutional nitpicker Paul about what the “last war” was?
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Bostondreams: Nah, wasn’t anyone in particular.
mclaren
@butler:
The crackpots have come out in force tonight. For the umpteenth time…Romney is a Mormon. To the fundamentalist evangelical Christians who form the base of the Republican party, Mormonism is equivalent to a Satanic cult, so Romney has zero chance of getting the nomination.
What’s the difference? Obama will appoint the same far-right fanatics to the Supreme Court that Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann would, so what does it matter?
No, I certainly don’t, and that’s why I’m not going to vote for Obama. Barack Obama is going to offer the legislation and make the appointments and propose the crazy far-right policies that the Republicans would propose if any of them got elected to the presidency.
Let’s talk about political reality, crackpot: Barack Obama ran on hope and change, and he gave us endless war and more national security state and presidential orders for the assassination of a U.S. citizen without even accusing him of committing a crime and expanding federal raids on state marijuana dispensaries and more giveaways to the Wall Street criminals who trashed the world economy.
That’s political reality.
If you’re disgusted by the insane far-right policies proposed by any of the Republican candidates for president, those are the policies Barack Obama has put in place and will continue and intensify.
Typical crackpot reasoning. There’s no middle ground — anyone who refuses to fall to his knees and worship obama is a teabagger.
You need to take it to the next level, and call me a “fifth columnist” and “evil” and “dangerously insane” and “an enemy combatant” for criticizing Barack Obama. You need to notify Homeland Security and NORAD and Delta Force to detain me, send out a team of marine corps snipers, and, if necessary, put a black bag over my head and drag me board a learjet headed for one of our third world allies so I can be tortured to death, now that I’ve said I’m seriously thinking about not voting for Obama.
You people are the political equivalent of flying saucer cultists.
Morzer
@dslak:
Some of those threads executed by Anne Laurie were innocent!
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
“I don’t always vote, but when i do, it won’t be for the person who at least acknowledges the issues i care about, over the person who hates everything i stand for.”
-the most interesting prog in the world.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@efgoldman: g’night
licensed to kill time
Jeez, Bachmann’s doubling down on the “little girls violated by the gov’t” line in a post-debate interview w/John King.
She seems to think they get the shots in the hoo-ha or something.
Bostondreams
@mclaren:
Yup, because lord knows the two nutcases he appointed to the SC already shows that.
doofus
@mclaren: So, not a dime’s worth of difference between Obama and Perry? Good to know.
jon
Sheesh, Raven. It’s not exactly a state secret that Ron Paul is a bit of a stickler for Constitutional issues.
Gin & Tonic
@mclaren:
Right. I can just see Rick Perry appointing Sonia Sotomayor.
wasabi gasp
Someone better get voted off next week, else this show sucks.
Reality Check
The Rick Perry Juggernaut rolls on. Romney is utterly panicked.
Anya
I wholeheartedly agree with the Guardian’s live blog:
Comrade Mary
Jesus Fuck, mclaren. Huff much?
Cacti
@Reality Check:
That might be the first thing you’ve ever written that I agree with.
MikeJ
Economist:
Suffern ACE
The most important thing however, is that Miss Philippines is still alive.
butler
I love that my one little post= a brigade of crackpots.
NO, Romney is a REPUBLICAN. Meaning they won’t give a shit if he skullfucks puppies every Sunday morning, they’ll find a way to justify it and support him.
Ok, you’re trolling me, right? This has to be a troll attempt.
Yup, has to be trolling.
Yes, lets. The reality is this: THIS IS THE SYSTEM WE LIVE IN. THIS IS THE WORLD WE LIVE IN. Its not fucking perfect, and it never will be. Yes, Obama has fucked up. He’s a human being, human beings fuck up. No one who has ever or will ever serve in any office won’t fuck up in some way. Grow up and deal with it.
No, anyone who refuses to live in the world as it exists is a hopeless idealist or a fanatic, and probably a little of both.
But seriously, this is trolling, right?
Anya
@mclaren: Show us on the doll where the black President hurt you.
Reality Check
Perry has this nomination all but wrapped up and in his back pocket. Game’s over barring a scandal.
butler
Wait, one last thing for Mcclaren: if Perry has no chance, and Romney has no chance, then who’s the nominee? And why would that person be any fucking better than either of them?
Morzer
To me, Romney looks like a boxer who knows he’s throwing what ought to be haymakers – and simply can’t understand why the audience is yawning and he’s losing on points.
Nutella
Best thing from the Guardian’s live blog:
Calouste
From the Guardian:
Feature, not bug.
doofus
@butler: Yeah, I thought of that question too, but then it occurred to me that I didn’t care what the answer was.
Chris
@Morzer:
Jon Huntsman: Firefly fan.
RandyH
Tonight’s CNN Tea Party Express Debate has been brought to you by the “Clean Coal” Industry.
Corner Stone
Romney will be the R nominee. I don’t know why this is so hard for people here to understand.
licensed to kill time
Perry’s going all ‘tear it down’ on a Tea Party crowd, stalking back and forth on the stage w/a microphone like a revivalist preacher. He just called the EPA a cemetery for jobs, and how we don’t need the gummint coming around here and getting all up in our face.
That’s the snippet I heard, crowd LOVES it.
AkaDad
The clear winner in tonight’s debate is Obama.
Calouste
You know Michelle, stuff has happened in the last 220 years since the Bill of Rights was ratified.
Of course what she really means and what the audience hears, is that she will bring a sacred unalterable text (the Bible, not the Constitution) to the White House and that she will turn the clock back to before the 11th amendment.
Cacti
@Morzer:
It’s still the Eddie Haskell factor.
People just don’t like an obvious phony.
scav
So, should all their debates be scheduled on nights with full or nearly full moons for the apparent entertainment value of the candidates revealing their true(r) selves?
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@Corner Stone:
They just want somebody to go Archie Bell and the Drells on his ass –
Hey
There’s gonna be a showdown
Hey a ay ay
Gonna be a showdown, showdown…
.
.
RandyH
@Corner Stone:
It’s WAY too early to predict anything like that but I hope he is. Obama will mop the floor with him.
cleek
@Calouste:
ask her to point out where in the Constitution it says a woman can be president.
kimp
I am still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that the audience was cheering the idea of letting the uninsured die. OMG, what is wrong with those people?
rikyrah
they are some evil, lowlife mofos…the entire lot of them
Morzer
@cleek:
I would like to hear Bachmann explain how I Timothy 2:12 allows for wimmins to be you know.. presidents.
I thought she believed in this Biblical stuff?
Chris
@Calouste:
She will then proceed to ignore that sacred text with the same enthusiasm with which she currently ignores the constitution. (Love your neighbor, feed the hungry and clothe the poor, rich man + eye of needle, etc).
JCT
@kimp: Because they are a bunch of imbeciles that are permanently arrested at age 17. Somehow managed to miss the classes on “there but for the grace of g_d go I” and Christian charity.
Grotesque.
gogol's wife
Thank you all for watching this so I didn’t have to. I feel I got a kind of Cubist version of the debate, all strange angles and flat perspective but much truer than so-called “reality.”
Morzer
@efgoldman:
Clearly, it would be a sexist blasphemy to actually quote the Bible at her. In fact, I feel outraged at myself for suggesting it. Bad, wicked Morzer.
I shall now flagellate myself. Tenderly.
Valdivia
@Anya:
win!
RandyH
Romney looked like a dolt.
Perry looked like a tough-talking cowboy.
Bachmann looked like an idiot.
Santorum looked like, well, you know. Santorum. (The link just perpetuates the Google top-ranking status.)
Ron Paul looked like a foolish old man. And he was booed by the racist audience for suggesting that not all Muslims are evil.
Newt’s quote of the night:
What might he have meant by that?
Huntsman is the invisible man.
Cain claims not to be a politician, yet he’s running for President.
Anyone else? If so, I can’t remember.
PaulW
Did any of them give Rise of the Planet of the Apes a negative review?
Morzer
I really feel that we ought to try and live-blog the next Republican mass-debation in the voice of Jon Gruden. I feel that phrases like “pressure up the middle” could only bring clarity to this.. intriguing collection of people.
Nutella
I wonder why some of their opponents don’t use the obvious question to Bachmann and Perry: Why is it that you claim to oppose government spending when you have spent your entire career taking money from the government and have never once held a private job?
scav
They be aginst dat dere ebil ebil Guvornmint death panels: they be all for them death panels they be settin on themselves, don’t cha know. Well, the grassroots death panels (so long as the grass is the approved of kind) and the for-profit ones.
OzoneR
@kimp:
personal responsibility. The hypothetical Wolf Blitzer was proposing was a guy who CAN afford to buy health insurance and didn’t, doesn’t surprise me that people feel “If he didn’t feel like taking care of himself when he could, fuck him”
Dee Loralei
@Morzer: that would be fucking brilliant.
Origuy
@Comrade Mary:
I used to be able to whistle into an acoustic coupler and get the computer on the other end to respond.
Couldn’t do it now, though.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@mclaren:
1. Being in Texas, I assure you that until the day after the election, you should be afraid of the possibility of President Perry.
2. President Romney will only differ from President Perry in what he says while he’s repealing Social Security.
Not voting for Obama guarantees a Republican victory, and there is nothing right now worse than that.
As for Obama, I’m not waiting for a Repubican president just so you can get over your amnesia of 2001-2009, or for that matter, 1993-2001, where the only major legislative accomplishment that wasn’t Republican was the tax increase.
Calouste
@Chris:
Not that Bible. The real one, written in ‘Mercan.
hhex65
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: Retain the purity of your precious bodily fluids, my friends.
gnomedad
Shorter mclaren: I do not avoid Democrats. But I deny them my essence.
ETA: @hhex65: Hahaha, GMTA.
Comrade Kevin
@Comrade Mary: 9600 baud? The first modem I had, for my Apple ][ computer, was a 300 baud thing. I couldn’t believe how fast the 1200 baud modem that replaced it was.
OzoneR
Yeah so a self-described liberal friend of mine said this about her supporting Ron Paul now
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@mclaren:
I’m so sorry, but the evidence completely invalidates this.
Comrade Mary
@OzoneR:
I blame Steve Jobs.
MikeJ
@Comrade Kevin: 300 baud? The luxury! We had to tie notes to rats and birds. Eight rats and one tropical bird it was. The extra one was for parroty.
Calouste
@OzoneR:
And how did your friend work out that Ron Paul is not an idiot? It takes one to know one I guess.
wasabi gasp
Huntsman is a douchebag! I didn’t know! He is such a multifaceted man and I’m enjoying learning about each and every one of those facets.
Comrade Kevin
@MikeJ: haha! Very good.
hhex65
@gnomedad: heh, 1st thing that popped into my head, too.
jibeaux
@OzoneR: Hell, you can find those folks in every park in America.
Still, it’s a fascinating philosophy, that we should vote for people who are different from everyone else. I have an uncle who would apparently make a crackerjack presidential candidate.
scav
@MikeJ: ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch. Parroty indeed, but I still want to see you take a bite out of your ratpack.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@OzoneR: Does she not realize that the only reason he stands up and says that stuff is because he knows it will never pass.
Suffern ACE
@jibeaux: Yet the Rent’s Too Damn High candidate didn’t end up making a difference last fall.
OzoneR
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Her response to my “um, those ideas include getting rid of the EPA and minimum wage” was
This is why progressives can’t win people.
OzoneR
@mclaren:
This is the point where I deem you crazier than the lady from Queens who told me Obama supported the Holocaust when I asked her to vote for David Weprin.
Nutella
@OzoneR:
Not the irrational people, that is. Unfortunately they’re the majority of voters.
RossInDetroit
@Comrade Kevin:
My first computer, in 1976, had 4,096 bytes of memory. I programmed it in 8 bit 6502 machine language. No keyboard and no monitor.
So get off my lawn.
(shakes cane at meddling kids)
Turgidson
@Calouste:
Exactamundo. The long-term goal of all these clowns (barring Huntsman…maybe Romney but tough to say what the jellyfish really believes) is to undermine any and all confidence in government. Threatening the Fed chairman with Texas frontier justice advances that goal in its own fucktarded way.
Elie
@gogol’s wife:
LOL!!!
I am wicha baby… just could not watch and your analysis is right the fuck on.
Comrade Kevin
@RossInDetroit: Did you feed it punch cards?
I college, I did do some work like that, though it was using an 8085 processor. Programmed it using assembly language, which I’d burn onto an EEPROM.
Elie
@Linda Featheringill:
Maybe he will shoot himself in his armpit
I dunno — everytime I see this guy I think he could do that (shoot himself accidentally in the armpit)
RossInDetroit
@Comrade Kevin:
KIM-1 microcomputer. hex keypad input and LED digit displays for output. Had about as much computing power as a modern novelty musical greeting card.
I still have a NEC in the basement that’s a TRS-80 clone, if you can believe someone would want such a thing.
harlana
can someone explain to me why anyone would elect Rick Santorum?
harlana
@wasabi gasp: Huntsman is a dick, I don’t think it goes much deeper than that except for a bit of nerd-rock element thrown in there, he likes to do that it seems
harlana
Perry is, in fact, more repulsive than Santorum, yes, it is possible
Comrade Kevin
@RossInDetroit: I was, of course, kidding about the punch cards. I had an after-school job at Lockheed once where I had to sort through boxes of punch cards and magnetic tapes, and decide whether or not to throw them away.
Also, I have an Apple //e out in the garage, somewhere. I used that computer for a good six years, through part of high school, and all of college.
MikeJ
@Comrade Kevin: The eng school had a card punch, but the only reader hooked up to anything was in Rolla. My personal machine was a commie, but that’s not too surprising.
Dennis SGMM
@RossInDetroit:
The first computers I worked on required programming in COBOL via punch cards. I then “moved on” to PASCAL and FORTRAN. I was, and still am, a rotten typist and with punch cards there was no error correction: you just loaded a fresh card. Good times.
RossInDetroit
@Dennis SGMM:
I missed punch cards by one term. I started school the fall they fired up a new VAX VMS 780 with terminal input. We coded COBOL on coding sheets & typed them into dumb terminals.
I have since spent 10X thousands of hours hacking COBOL, Macro Level CICS & other business machine codeage. Not much since Y2K, though.
Origuy
I started on an ASR33 Teletype machine that punched paper tape. I would type in a BASIC program, call up the Indiana University CDC 6600 on a 110 baud modem, feed in the tape, get my error messages, fix them a line at a time, and punch out a new version of my program. That was in 1973, my junior year in high school.
My lawn, get off it.
harlana
@Dennis SGMM: I worked as a programmer in COBOL for a year, (I sucked!) we worked on a mainframe, of course, part of my responsibility was to get the server started in the morning by feeding in the punch cards to get the mainframe booted up for the day
Comrade Kevin
@RossInDetroit: The college I went to had a DECSystem 20 when I started. They replaced it with a VAX sometime while I was there.
RossInDetroit
@Origuy:
Paper Tape! Baudot existed only in our wildest dreams. We saved code and data to audio cassette tape on a portable borrowed from my sister. I kid you not. The mid ’70s were lean times for teenaged computer nerds.
I’ve been working in an elementary school this week. The ‘house rules’ posted on the walls require the students to leave their iPads in their lockers during class.
harlana
999
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harlana
@RossInDetroit: now that is some nerd stuff i can get into, i’m not into the gaming stuff, but that is cool in a historical sense
RossInDetroit
Time was I’d debugged so many COBOL core dumps I could practically diagnose the problem by weighing the printout in my hand.
RossInDetroit
@harlana:
I’m a hardware guy these days. Making stereo amps out of WWII guided missile vacuum tubes & stuff like that. It’s more hands-on. I doubt I’ll ever code again, though I had a good 20 year run at it.
In terms of history of technology, the development of RADAR during WWII is an amazing story.
priscianus jr
@Comrade Mary:
Davis X. Machina
@Origuy: Identical experience, same year, using the membership of a friend from a well heeled family. We were working out of the Boston Museum of Science. Acoustic coupler, rubber cups for the phone.
mclaren
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
Technically speaking, Ron Paul is correct. WW II was the last time America actually declared war on anyone.
Every American use of military force since WW II has been some sort of bogus “police action” or “sending advisors plus military support” or some other mealy-mouthed doubletalk.
America has not declared war since December 7, 1941. And that’s a big part of the problem with U.S. use of military force since 1945. Because when we’ve got a situation where the American president can act like a Roman emperor and simply order hundreds of thousands of troops to bomb and strafe and roll tanks into some third world hellhole on the other side of the world, with no barrier to entry to the conflict raised by the requirement that congress put its ass on the line and actually vote for a full declaration of war, we’re in a very dangerous situation.
That kind of situation of send-in-the-troops-because-the-emperor’s-whim-desires-it leads directly to a military garrison state where the rule of law goes away and might makes right. Which is, in fact, the kind of society America is rapidly turning into.
priscianus jr
When I started high school in 1959, I used to help out in the student record office. We used edge-notched cards, known as McBee cards, with a wire rod. It was fun pulling those cards. This technology was invented in 1896.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge-notched_card
Frankensteinbeck
@butler:
I’m not quite sure with Mclaren. I understand it has a blog and a long history of this kind of freakish disassociation with reality outside of these comments. But we ARE talking about someone who – and I’m not kidding – rewrote Obama’s SOTU because the actual one didn’t betray him enough.
@Morzer:
She believes in specifically this. It’s one of her big super-Christian things. Somehow, she herself PERSONALLY gets an exception. Tea Party in a nutshell.
gnomedad
I learned computing with toilet paper and pebbles, whippersnappers.
RossInDetroit
@gnomedad:
Calculated the equinoxes on a slide rule whittled from a smilodon tusk. Get off my veldt.
RossInDetroit
Brett and Rennie Sparks must be seen live to be appreciated. American Gothic at its weirdest and most compelling.
Mwangangi
@RossInDetroit: Genius.