…I can’t resist drawing your attention to this line:
By the way, Politico? Quoting Fred Barnes on anything is the recognized international I Got Nothin’signal. Quoting Fred Barnes on American politics is the functional equivalent of asking a fruit bat what it thinks about the trade deficit.
The whole post (on the bathos of GOP Daddies bemoaning their current nominating pool) is, as always, worth a read.
Nothing else to add, except that on my travels as a youth, I had occasion to consume fruit bats, both grilled and stewed (once in a braise of five species, two of them previously undescribed). I can assure you that they are tasty, but fully as uninformed about balances of trade as Mr. Pierce suggests.
Yet more thread!
Image Vincent van Gogh, The Bat, 1886
wobblybits
I would have paid money had he been able to work in the phrase “bat guano otré”
wobblybits
@wobblybits: should be outré
jeffreyw
This thread just amazes Toby.
JPL
@jeffreyw: Appropriate!
JPL
When I taste a new meat, I often use the word gamey. I’m not sure that applies to bats though.
freelancer
Anybody have any links to a live stream of msnbc? I don’t have cable and justin tv’s feed got pulled a couple months back. Thanks in advance!
JGabriel
If Esquire ever lets Charlie Pierce go, at least he knows he’s got a backup spot waiting for him here at Balloon Juice, should he care to ask for it.
.
AA+ Bonds
Erryone read this story about liberals and libertarians at Naked Capitalism, that is, unless you think Ron Paul is fine and dandy
Brandon
Intrade has Santorum up 42% today and gaining. Romney is down 20%. Paul is even. Current odds are Romney 41%, Santorum 30.4%, Paul 29%. It seems as though a lot of this late Santorum push is coming from people responding to Nate Silver’s Twitter feed. It is interesting because the Iowa Electronic Markets don’t seem to be following the same trend. Paul has been gaining the most there and the Romney drop is more modest, while there is no Santorum contract, the none of the above contract is down a little bit. I do wonder how much of this is due to manipulation by Paul’s minions though.
My guess is that Nate is probably right and Santorum will win. My hope is that Romney’s doesn’t gain anything beyond what he’s polling. Which could rip this race wide open if the open secret is that late deciders are decidedly anti-Romney. And I hope to see that same truth hold in subsequent primaries. I doubt any amount of SuperPAC negative ad carpet bombs would be able to shake the loser off then.
scav
For some reason, I am fully convinced that SP&T would have been at any meal that involved grilled and stewed fruit bats, and that goes double for any meal involving a braise of five species, two of them previously undescribed.
mai name
I love me some Charlie Pierce.
SiubhanDuinne
@scav:
She’s just next door, you could ask her.
AA+ Bonds
The results from Iowa tonight will be bad for the Republicans in the general – that’s pretty much inevitable.
The split will be close and tensions will be high, and after the Tea Party, New Hampshire is considered too liberal to even count anymore.
There will be precious little time to secure a backroom-chosen candidate (i.e., Mitt Romney) before the loony wilds of white-power-Republican, black-baby-robo-call South Carolina.
And anyone who wins South Carolina will be the full-on favorite, by unscientific history alone, to win the nomination.
Gust Avrakotos
I wonder if Cole is ever going to get his pea brain to generate enough energy to stop web images from being links across the entire content section of the page.
Fucking website administration amateur hour around here.
SiubhanDuinne
@jeffreyw:
Kitteh face!
nancydarling
Tom, I finally convinced my adventure loving son (he ate a guinea pig on his trip to the Galapagos and Peru last year) to read “A Cook’s Tour” by Anthony Bourdain. I think my son could get himself around a medley of braised bats, but he draws the line at eating the still-beating heart of a cobra as Bourdain claims to have done. Would you eat a still-beating cobra heart?
I am enchanted by the van Gogh. It is new to me.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@jeffreyw: Kitteh!
kideni
I love that Pierce has a tag for “Stuff in Politico That Makes Me Want to Guzzle Antifreeze”
El Kabong
I’ll say it again, for the umpteenth time. Charles Pierce (or the Esquire Politics blog) deserves a spot in the blogroll on Balloon-Juice’s right-hand margin.
Tom Levenson
@nancydarling: re cobra heart: it’s just possible that my evil son could double dog dare me into it. But that’s a high hurdle.
Pretty much any mammal is fair game, though.
Yeah — I hadn’t seen that van Gogh before, nor had my artist wife. Youthful exuberance, I think, but tasty.
Tom Levenson
@El Kabong: Concur. I’ll drop John a line, as you can (and should).
slag
Bats are too good for a Fred Barnes comparison. If anything, I would have gone with banana slug.
Yes, I like bats.
driftglass
Charlie Pierce is a fine writer.
nancydarling
@driftglass: As is driftglass.
Kathy in St. Louis
Charles Pierce is one of the best things I found in 2011. Not that I found him on my own. Thanks, Balloon Juice.
chrome agnomen
@nancydarling:
DG is an acknowledged king of evisceration.
DanielX
Charlie Pierce and Driftglass are both great writers, period. However…I do get a little charge at the vision of Republican Party elders waking up next to…Newt or Willard either one. No wonder they want to chew their arms off and escape before he wakes up.
But after thirty years of partying down with Newt, Rush, Hannity, Doughy Pantload and assorted other yahoos to win elections with votes from people who thought Terri Schiavo was going to get up and sing God Bless America at any moment…well. What the fuck did they expect?
It kind of pegs my irony meter to see how appalled the Republican establishment is to find that Newt, Willard and the assorted other chuckleheads comprise the Republican presidential field. This isn’t a case of chickens coming home to roost, more like a flock of filthy carrion vultures. They’ve finally reached/achieved a point where any candidate who can win a general election is unacceptable to the Republican base. Ronald Reagan took 49 states in 1980, and thirty years later the Republicans are probably going to get whupped like a red headed stepchild by the weakest Democratic candidate since Jimmy Carter. One would think this might be cause for reflection, but instead their candidates are doubling down on teh crazy.
Conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed. I suppose there’s always 2016 for them to look forward to.
Susanna K.
Oh, I don’t know – I think fruit bats might have a better understanding of trade deficits than you’re giving them credit for.
Tom Levenson
@Susanna K.: Nice…
Tehanu
But this IS the Century of the Fruitbat!